2014 Meritorious Winner in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to inform you on the excellent performance of the UMD undergraduate team in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling of this year. Our team was declared a Meritorious Winner, which puts us in the top 7.5% of the category it competed:
http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/contests/2014/results/.

Warmest congratulations to our undergraduate team: Chris Lawler, Nathan Ng, and Sean Pannella!

They did a superb performance in this competition using their outstanding interdisciplinary knowledge in modeling, programming, and machine learning.

This performance is due also to the fantastic training by the team of AMSC graduate students and a NWC postdoc led by Matt Guay. Matt did an outstanding job of putting together the training tutorials, as well as coaching the UMD team and I thank him for his hard work. Many thanks to him and to the entire team: Dana-Adriana Botesteanu, Xuemei Chen, Chae Clark , David Darmon, Stefan Doboszczak, Virginia Forstall, and Lucia Simonelli for the tutorials they presented during the Fall of 2013 prior to the internal competition.

In terms of statistics. There were 6755 participating teams from 18 countries. U.S. participated with 391 teams.

• 13 outstanding winners (1%)
• 12 finalist winners (1%)
• 656 meritorious winners (9%)
• 2168 honorable mentions (31%)
• 3891 successful participants (57%)
• 15 unsuccessful participants (1%)
• The MCM teams can only submit solutions to only one of two problems (A and B).

• 7 outstanding winners – 1 US team
• 6 finalist winners – 1 US team
• 203 meritorious winners – 27 US teams (one of them UMD!)
• 1211 honorable mentions
• 1439 successful participants
• 5 unsuccessful participants

Our team ended in the top 7.5% of teams that submitted solutions to problem B.

Congratulations again to our team (Chris Lawler, Nathan Ng, and Sean Pannella), and many thanks to Matt Guay and the AMSC/NWC trainers team!

Go Terps!!

Best regards,
Radu Balan