The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) gives the SIAM Award in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) to two undergraduate teams judged "outstanding" among hundreds of participants worldwide in the annual MCM administered by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP).
The contest inspires students to develop solutions involving mathematical modeling to open-ended problems in two categories: continuous and discrete. SIAM judges pick a winner in each of the two categories among teams determined "outstanding" by COMAP judging.
Both 2011 and 2012 recipients were awarded prizes at the Prizes and Awards Luncheon held on Tuesday, July 10, at the SIAM Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Enhao Gong, Rongsha Li, and Xiaoyun Wang of Beijing's Tsinghua University, mentored by their faculty advisor, Jimin Zhang, were winners of the 2011 Continuous Problem "Snowboard Course." Li was present to accept the award from SIAM President Nick Trefethen.
The award for the 2011 Discrete Problem, "Repeater Coordination," went to California's Harvey Mudd College students Daniel Furlong, Dylan Marriner, and Louis Ryan. Their faculty advisor was Susan Martonosi. Ryan accepted the award on behalf of his team.
The award for the 2012 Continuous Problem, entitled "The Leaves of a Tree," went to the team from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. Team members Cheng Fu, Hangqi Zhao, Danting Zhu received their awards at the luncheon. Their advisor for the contest was Zhiyi Tan.
The Discrete Problem for 2012 was titled "Camping Along the Big Long River." University of Louisville students James Jones, Suraj Kannan, and Joshua Mitchell nabbed the SIAM award in this category. They were coached by Changbing Hu. Kannan and Mitchell received the award for the team.
Winners presented their papers in a session of Student Days on Wednesday, July 11.
Student recipients each received a cash award of $300, a SIAM Student Travel Award, complimentary SIAM membership for three years, and a framed, hand-calligraphed certificate for their schools.