The 2005 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Award in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling went to a team of RPI undergraduate students. RPI students Meral Reyhan ’05 and John Evans ’06 competed in the competition with 663 other teams representing institutions from Harvard and MIT to others around the country and the world.
In the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, students were given four days to solve one of two problems using the mathematical resources at their disposal. The RPI team took on a problem involving a model to determine the optimal number of tollbooths in a toll plaza. Their solution was titled “A Quasi-Sequential Cellular Automation Approach to Traffic Modeling.” Along with only seven other schools, Reyhan and Evans’ solution was deemed “outstanding.”
As the winners of the SIAM award, Reyhan and Evans will present their findings to the SIAM annual meeting in July in New Orleans, where they will receive a monetary award at an award luncheon.
