Carnegie Mellon University is looking for high school students whose interests in language, math and computers could make them top competitors in the second annual North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad.

The university is one of about a dozen schools nationwide that will host an open round of competition Feb. 5. Competitors will take a pencil-and-paper test. Those scoring in the top 25 percent will return for an invitational round on March 11.

Winners of the invitational round will be eligible to compete in the International Linguistics Olympiad this summer in Bulgaria. Last year, a U.S. team that included a Shady Side Academy student tied for first place in team competition, and a U.S. student took top individual honors at the international event.

The Olympiad introduces talented students to the emerging field of computational linguistics, so students need not have prior knowledge of the field to compete. Training will be made available for students and schools who express interest. Computational linguistics, which applies computational methods to the study of languages, encompasses areas such as search engines, computer translation and voice-recognition systems.

For more information and to see sample problems, visit www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu. To schedule a training or informational session, contact Mary Jo Bensasi of Carnegie Mellon's Language Technologies Institute at maryjob@cs.cmu.edu or 412-268-7517.

About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs in engineering, computer science, robotics, business, public policy, fine arts and the humanities. More than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovation. A small student-to-faculty ratio provides an opportunity for close interaction between students and professors. While technology is pervasive on its 144-acre Pittsburgh campus, Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive among leading research universities for the world-renowned programs in its College of Fine Arts. A global university, Carnegie Mellon has campuses in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia and Europe. For more, see www.cmu.edu.