Mathworks Students Advance to National Level of Siemens Competition

San Marcos, TX - November 14, 2011

A team of three students from the Mathworks Honors Summer Math Camp (HSMC) is advancing to the national level of the 2011 Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology.

High school students Kevin Tian (Austin, TX), Kevin Chang (Plano, TX), and Andrew Xu (San Franciso, CA) won first place in the UT-Austin regional of the Siemens Competition this past weekend to advance to the national level. The three will compete against five other teams from across the country in Washington, D.C., December 1-5. At stake are college scholarships ranging from $10,000 - $100,000 and the recognition of being honored as the top young minds in the country. Tian, Chang, and Xu's research was conducted during the 2011 Honors Summer Math Camp at Texas State University, under the guidance of Professor Edward Early of the St. Edward's University math department. Their project, "Determining the Existence of Graceful Valuations of Various Families of Graphs," contributes important work towards the Graceful Tree Conjecture, one of the unsolved problems in graph labeling.

This is the fifth HSMC team to advance to the national level in the 11 years of Mathworks teams participating in the Siemens Competition. To date, 114 HSMC students have been recognized as semifinalists or above in the prestigious research competition. In 2009, a team of three students from the HSMC won first place overall in the Competition, sharing a $100,000 college scholarship.

Also competing in the weekend's events was the HSMC team of Alexandra Ilic (Austin, TX), Bobby Shen (Sugar Land, TX), and Lilly Shen (Sugar Land, TX). Their project, "On the Acyclic Subgraphs of K-Majority Tournaments," was mentored by Professor Jian Shen of the Texas State University math department.

Kevin, Kevin, Andrew

L to R: Max Warshauer, Mathworks Director; Kevin Chang; Kevin Tian; Andrew Xu

Shen, Shen, Ilic

L to R: Max Warshauer, Lilly Shen, Alexandra Ilic, Bobby Shen

About Mathworks

Mathworks is a center for innovative mathematics education programs at Texas State University - San Marcos with core programs of Summer Math Camps, Teacher Training and Curriculum Development. The Mathworks Junior Summer Math Camp and Honors Summer Math Camp are nationally recognized as one of the premier programs in the country. For more information about the camps, and other Mathworks programs, see www.txstate.edu/mathworks.

About the Siemens Competition

Launched in 1998 by the Siemens Foundation, the Siemens Competition is the nation's premier science research competition for high school students. An all-time record of 2,436 students registered to enter the Siemens Competition this year for an unprecedented 1,541 projects submitted. 317 students were named semifinalists and 96 were named regional finalists, representing 21 states. Entries are judged at the regional level by esteemed scientists at six leading research universities which host the regional competitions: California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Notre Dame and The University of Texas at Austin.