Rensselaer Math Students Shine in International Modeling Contest
Rensselaer Math Students Shine in International Modeling Contest
May 25, 2023
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) team of Calvin Ang ’24, Haoran Bao ’25, and Caleb Smith ’25 received a Finalist designation for their paper in the Mathematical and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling! This means that their paper was judged among the top 99 out of 2,557 teams competing on their problem.
The team’s project pertained to the development and exploration of a model for how plant communities respond and adapt to periods of drought and abundant precipitation. Their approach integrated Lotka-Volterra dynamics within a cellular automaton framework to handle the spatial component. Of note, this is the second time in three years that Ang has been part of a team reaching a Finalist status. This level of sustained success in the contest was last seen by RPI students in 2011.
Additionally, the team of Alexander Do (a high school student), Colin Langella ’25, and Arvind Rathnashyam ’25 received honorable mention and scored in the top 22% out of 8,011 teams for their efforts in developing a model to predict, based on historical data sets, the distribution of reported results for the number of tries required to guess a particular word in the Wordle game.
The teams were coached by graduate students Allison Carson and Jesica Bauer and were supported in training for the contest by RPI’s mathematical sciences department.
Contact
For general inquiries: newsmedia@rpi.edu
About Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Founded in 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is America’s first technological research university. Rensselaer encompasses five schools, over 30 research centers, more than 140 academic programs including 25 new programs, and a dynamic community made up of over 6,800 students and 104,000 living alumni. Rensselaer faculty and alumni include upwards of 155 National Academy members, six members of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, six National Medal of Technology winners, five National Medal of Science winners, and a Nobel Prize winner in Physics. With nearly 200 years of experience advancing scientific and technological knowledge, Rensselaer remains focused on addressing global challenges with a spirit of ingenuity and collaboration. To learn more, please visit www.rpi.edu.