TJ Student Team Places Second In International Math Competition

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — To address the global challenge of affordable housing and homelessness, math just might be the answer.

A team of students from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology placed second in the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge, a prestigious international competition. They were chosen from nine finalists from U.S., England, and Wales.

The team of 11th and 12th graders included Rishabh Chhabra, Om Gole, Rishabh Prabhu, Laura Zhang, and Victoria Zhang. The students won $15,000 in college scholarships as the runner-up during the competition's final Monday in New York City.

The M3 Challenge, held by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and sponsored by MathWorks, involves participants using mathematical modeling to solve a real-world problem. This year's challenge had participants work to solve the crises of homelessness and affordable housing shortage.

"We pose big problems about real issues that many students may not know much about," said Dr. Karen Bliss, senior manager of education and outreach at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. "They need to research, quantify the parameters, organize data, and use skills they’ve learned in math class but may have never related to something real."

Teams spent 14 hours in March to use mathematical modeling to solve the problem. If participants could find a way to predict long-term housing supply and homelessness trends was possible, participants were asked how it could be used to find solutions to homelessness.

The finalists had been selected from 3,000 students on 655 teams chosen by a panel of Ph.D.-level mathematicians.

"Every year without fail, we hear from participating students who refer to their participation in M3 Challenge as a life-changing experience that helped open their eyes to how important, useful, and valuable the application of mathematics can be," said Bliss.

There were more than $100,000 in prizes awarded during the final. The first place winner winning $20,000 was the team of students from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts — Tianyi Evans Gu, Yifan Kang, Eric Wang, Anthony Yang and Angeline Zhao, who split a $20,000 scholarship prize. Other winners were TJ's Livingston, New Jersey-based Livingston High School students Harsh Akunuri, Olivia Mei, Timothy Wu, Kevin Zhang, and Nathan Zhang, winning $10,000 for third place and teams from Canyon Crest Academy in San Diego, California, The Pingry School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and York Community High School in Elmhurst, Illinois each receiving $5,000.

Other prizes awarded were the Technical Computing Winner prize of $3,000 to the Gainesville, Florida-based F.W. Buchholz High School team; Technical Computing Runner-up prize of $2,000 to the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Blake School-Northrop Campus team; Technical Computing Third Place prize of $1,000 to the Watford, Hertfordshire-based Watford Grammar School for Boys team; and Outstanding Communication of Results prize of $500 was given to the team representing Watford Grammar School for Boys.