A team of students from St. John’s School in Houston has advanced to the finals of the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (M3 Challenge), a prestigious international math competition. The team’s innovative solution to the pressing issues of extreme heat and power grid failures earned them a spot among the nine finalist teams.
In early March, the students—Anik Banerji, David Qian, John Vu, Brandon Wu, and Helen Yang—dedicated 14 hours to the online competition, which attracted over 3,600 high school students from the U.S. and U.K. Their submission was recognized as one of the best solutions addressing real-world challenges that local and national governments are currently tackling.
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The M3 Challenge, now in its 20th year, is organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and sponsored by MathWorks. Showing the problem-solving tool and encouraging students to pursue careers in applied math, computational and data sciences, and technical computing.
The finalists will present their findings to a panel of professional mathematicians in New York City on April 28 this month. The competition will require students to use mathematical modeling to answer critical questions, such as predicting indoor temperatures in non-air-conditioned urban dwellings during heat waves and assessing the power grid’s capacity during peak summer months.
Over 794 teams submitted papers detailing their recommendations, and only the winning teams will share $100,000 in scholarships, with the champion team receiving $20,000.
For more information about the M3 Challenge, visit here.
