Recently, 2254 teams representing institutions from fourteen countries participated in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling of America, and the result has been issued on its website. The team of HUST, made up of 3 students of the School of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Xiong Zhe, Mei Qipei, and Han Fei, were designated as OUTSTANDING WINNERS and they also got the SIAM Award. It is the first time that Hubei team won the prize.
In 2009, while preparing to participate the China Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling in September, Xiong Zhe and Mei Qipei were discussing about taking part in the contest in America. Xiong is good at modeling while Mei does well in programming. Since the paper for the American contest must be written in English, they also needed a team member good at English. They thought of their good friend Han Fei at once, who had won lots of English contest prizes. So they invited Han Fei joining them to enter for the MCM.
It's hectic 96 hours. This year's contest ran from Thursday, February 18 to Monday, February 22, 2010. During that time, teams of up to three undergraduate or high school students researched, modeled, and submitted a solution to one of two modeling problems. The 2010 MCM was primarily an online contest. Teams registered, obtained contest materials, and downloaded the problem and data at the prescribed time through COMAP s MCM Website. The job was soon divided in the team. Xiong Zhe did the modeling, Mei Qipei came to the programming, and Han Fei would write all the English papers.
'Our solution seemed much easier than the others', Xiong said, when being asked about the experience to success. They used only one model through the whole contest, which saved more energy to do much analysis to the numbers, and gave suggestions to the different situations.
Having the excellent cooperation this time, the 3 students have already decided to start another program. They made a scientific innovation group which is said having successfully applied a fund from the Undergraduate Scientific Innovation Program of Qiming School.
