Mercer Island High School sophomores Tomasz Prussak and David Stein took fourth place in the advanced division of the fourth annual Pacific Lutheran University High School Programming Contest, held Saturday, Feb. 1 at PLU’s Morken Center for Learning and Technology.

“Computer science, technology and engineering jobs continue to grow in the Puget Sound and events like the PLU Programming Contest provide our students with amazing opportunities to compete with the area peers,” said Mercer Island School District Superintendent Dr. Gary Plano.

The contest, sponsored by Microsoft, PLU and Intel, brings together talented students from high schools throughout the state of Washington to compete in a spirit of fun, testing their programming skills and problem-solving ability. Students worked for three hours to write programs to solve as many problems as they could from a set of 12 written problems for each category. Over 30 teams registered for the contest, with 80 students from 14 schools competing for awards and prizes.