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Office of Public Relations |
UD math modeling team takes top honors |
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A team of three University of Delaware students took top honors and another team of two UD students placed at the meritorious level in this year's Contest in Mathematical Modeling, the premiere international mathematical modeling contest sponsored by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP). UD competitors in this year's event included junior Bob Liu and seniors Matthew Thies and Zachary Ulissi on the Outstanding designated team; seniors Donald Knieriem and Robert Mitchell on the Meritorious designated team; and senior Stephen Johnson and freshman Kyle Thomas on the Successful designated team. Coached by Louis Rossi, associate professor of mathematical sciences at UD, the seven participants prepared for the contest--a virtual competition that involved downloading test questions on a Thursday at 8 p.m. and turning in written solutions the following Monday at 8 p.m.--by working throughout the year on old problems that Rossi deemed especially challenging. This year's outstanding team, which placed in the top percentile, tackled a problem that analyzed the impact on coastal Florida of melting polar ice caps, due to global warming. Given a scenario of a three-degree increase, contestants were asked to chart the impact on coastal areas and come up with different remediation techniques. The meritorious team, which placed in the top 13th percentile, worked on designing an algorithm for the popular game Sodoku, to determine how difficult a resulting puzzle would be. The contest, which is open to all undergraduates in the world, ran this year from Feb. 7-Feb. 11, and began with more than 3,800 teams. A total of 1,162 teams actually made it to the finish; and due to the intensive nature of the problems, contestants just learned of their rating status in mid-April. Media contact: Becca Hutchinson, (302) 831-1418, [playfair@udel.edu] |
