High School Seniors Shine at 2024 Science Competitions

Summary

Sources

math.mit.edu

Celebrating excellence in mathematics and science, ten PRIMES and RSI high school seniors achieved remarkable success at the 2024 Regeneron Science Talent Search Competition and the 2024 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. These prestigious competitions play a crucial role in fostering young scientific talent and innovation. Michelle Wei stood out with her impressive achievements. At ISEF, she won the Young Scientist Award, receiving a fifty thousand dollar scholarship, and the First Grand Award in the Systems Software category for her project on solving second-order cone programs in matrix multiplication time, mentored by Guanghao Ye. Michelle also secured third place at the talent search competition, earning a one hundred fifty thousand dollar scholarship with her project on the same topic. Joseph Vulakh demonstrated outstanding prowess by winning multiple awards. He earned the Fourth Grand Award in the Mathematics category, the NSA Research Directorate Second Place Award, and an Honorable Mention from the AMS for his project on twisted homogeneous racks over the alternating groups, mentored by Professor Julia Plavnik and Doctor Héctor Peña Pollastri of Indiana University Bloomington. Joseph will be joining MIT as an undergraduate in the fall. Jason Mao was recognized with the Mu Alpha Theta Second Award for his project on the factorization properties of Puiseux Monoids, mentored by SHSU Professor Scott Chapman and postdoc Felix Gotti. Alan Bu achieved an impressive tenth place finish at the talent search competition. His project on the maximum number of spanning trees in a planar graph with a fixed number of edges, mentored by Yuchong Pan, earned him a forty thousand dollar scholarship. Other PRIMES and RSI students also made significant contributions, with one becoming a finalist and seven others winning national scholar awards. A heartfelt thank you goes out to the mentors and advisors who supported these students. The guidance and mentorship provided by PRIMES Director Slava Gerovitch, PRIMES Chief Research Advisor Pavel Etingof, RSI Faculty Advisor David Jerison, PRIMES and RSI head mentor Tanya Khovanova, and the students' mentors were instrumental in their success.