Winchester Students Advance to Finals in Prestigious International Math Competition

Team from Winchester College will win a portion of ~£75,000 in scholarships in MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge

For 14 straight hours in early March, a small group of Winchester College students came together to participate in an international online maths competition. A combination of maths smarts and creative thinking has added up to a spot in the finals for the team, whose submission was selected as one of the best solutions to the escalating crises of extreme heat and power grid failures, which governments are working to mitigate.

The students – Alexander Cirstea, Andrei Diachuk, Henry Ng, Victor Sim, and Yuyao Xie of Winchester-based Winchester College – make up one of the nine finalist teams in MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (M3 Challenge), a unique competition that drew more than 3,600 11th and 12th graders in the U.S. and sixth form students in the U.K. this year. The team, whose work underwent intense scrutiny by judges in the first two rounds of assessment, has one last hurdle when they head to New York City on April 28 to present their findings to a panel of professional mathematicians for final validation.

Using mathematical modeling, students had to come up with solutions to real-world questions:

How can we predict the indoor temperature of non-air-conditioned urban dwellings during a heat wave? How much demand should a power grid be prepared to handle during the summer months? Will this demand change over time? Can cities minimize the effects of a heat wave or a power grid failure?

Now in its 20th year, M3 Challenge is a program of Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and is sponsored by MathWorks. It spotlights applied mathematics as a powerful problem-solving tool and motivates students to consider further education and careers in applied math, computational and data sciences, and technical computing. Winning teams will be awarded a share of ~£75,000 in scholarships, with the champion team receiving ~£16,000.

A total of 794 teams submitted papers detailing their recommendations. Roughly 55% of those submissions included technical computing to support and enhance their solutions, and those coding skills make them eligible for additional scholarship prizes.

“Heat waves are not just uncomfortable, they can be quite dangerous,” said Dr. Karen Bliss, Senior Manager of Education and Outreach at SIAM. “In many locations, air conditioning is not a luxury, but a necessity, since heat stress can exacerbate underlying illnesses in vulnerable populations.”

“Unfortunately, mass use of air conditioning puts a strain on the electrical grid and resulting power outages can be devastating,” Bliss explained. “Cities and rural areas alike will benefit from having plans in place for managing energy demands and caring for citizens who need support during heat waves.” 

The team’s coach, mathematics teacher Corina Cirstea, said “I am proud to see that the team tackled these complex problems with both depth and originality. M3 Challenge allowed them to combine their technical knowledge with practical thinking, ground their models in physical principles, and as a result, deliver an outstanding solution.”

Team member Alexander Cirstea said that M3 Challenge stands out for its emphasis on not just making predictions but also using those predictions to create real-world solutions. “We prioritized this during M3 Challenge weekend, applying domain knowledge from physical and social sciences to make our approaches both innovative and grounded in reality. As a result, we not only predicted trends, but we found creative solutions and strategies to solve the problems of tomorrow.”

In addition to Winchester College, the other finalists include students from Haberdashers’ Boys’ School in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, and from U.S. schools in Durham, North Carolina; Houston, Texas; Mason, Ohio; Oakton, Virginia; Rye, New York; Winter Park, Florida; and Zionsville, Indiana.