Five NCSSM modeling teams will compete later this spring in the International Mathematical Modeling Competition later this spring. Two winning US teams will travel to the International Congress of Mathematics Education, to be held in Hamburg, Germany, next summer, where they will receive their recognition.

NCSSM represents 11 percent of all teams competing to represent the US in the IMMC. The teams won the right to compete by their excellent showing in the High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling, a 36-hour contest in which approximately 1,000 high school teams competed. In the HiMCM, two problems appeared on the contest webpage at 9:30 am on Saturday, November 14. By 9:30 pm, Sunday, November 15, each team had prepared their 20-page solutions for blind judging by teams of Ph.D. applied mathematicians. The NCSSM teams chose which of the two problems to work on and spent the 36 hours working feverishly to create, solve, and improve mathematical models to address the questions posed.

The solutions presented by NCSSM’s five teams were recognized as either Outstanding (highest honors), National Finalists (top 10), or Finalists (top 40). The students representing NCSSM in the upcoming IMMC competition are:

James Chapman, Jonathon Kuo, Tejal Patwardhan, Vibha Puri (Outstanding, Problem A);

Jeffrey He, Simon Marland, Justin Zhang, Edward Zuang (Outstanding Problem A);

Kunal Lodaya, Sarah Wu, Sunwoo Yim, Jennifer Zou (National Finalist Problem B);

Taesoo Daniel Lee, Akshay Patel, Suhas Rao, Murali Saravnan (National Finalist Problem B);

and Anna Hattle, Rose Huang, Annie Xie, Katherine Yang (Finalist Problem B).

—  Dan Teague, Mathematics Instructor