Last fall I had the honor of coaching six teams of three students (18 students in total) so they could compete in the 2023 SCUDEM challenge. This challenge is hosted by SIMIODE, which is a 501(c)3 non-profit, open community of teachers and learners using modeling first to teach and learn differential equations in an original way.
All of the students I coached were Georgia High School students who were enrolled in a Georgia Tech Dual Enrollment program (Distance Math). Each team completes the challenge by submitting a link to an unlisted video on YouTube, which then gets reviewed by at least 3 judges (usually more than 3).
One of my teams in particular did extremely well and won an Outstanding Certificate, which is the highest honor possible. The teams that reach this level have their submissions added to the official SIMIODE YouTube site. Their full presentation is here, and an image from their presentation is above.
Congratulations to all of my teams! It was an honor being able to coach such talented and engaged students!
Earlier this month myself and two GT Undergrads gave an online talk on undergraduate research for the Dunwoody High School Science Honor Society, and their Mu Alpha Theta (Math Honors) Society. Many thanks to them for giving us this opportunity!
The three of us shared stories on how we got into research as undergraduate students, advice on how to get into research as an undergraduate, and general tips for success in college.
Our talk, “Pathways to Research: Navigating Your Path to Academic and Research Success” had about 70 attendees. And we were delighted to have been asked many questions by high school students interested in undergraduate research!
If there are any other high school student groups interested in having me for a similar presentation let me know, and I’ll see what I can do.
Last weekend I attended a few talks at the SIMODE Expo online conference, one of which was a talk by the three students who I coached last fall for a mathematical modeling challenge. Congratulations again to Royce Arockiasamy, Henry Bui, and Adi Krish – their outstanding teamwork in the SCUDEM modeling challenge last fall led them to be offered with a chance to present their work at the SIMODE Expo last weekend.
Their talk was titled SCUDEM Outstanding Award Team: Humans Don’t Deserve the World — Modeling the Introduction of Humans to a Predator-Prey System. They summarized their work, how they prepared for the challenge, some of the feedback they received from judges, and some of what they learned and appreciated from having a chance to participate in the challenge.
The conference organizers posted a recording of their session on YouTube.
For a summary of what they presented, here is their conference abstract:
In the Fall of 2022, our team competed in SCUDEM VII hosted by SIMIODE, where we received the highest distinction – Outstanding Award. Our goal was to study humans’ effects on predator-prey populations when they populate an area. In this talk, we would like to go over how we prepared for and solved Problem C, present our equations and their derivations, explain our models, go over some of the feedback from the judges, and talk about how the SCUDEM challenge benefited us as students. See the Outstanding Team Video video posted on SIMIODE’s YouTube Channel.
The GT School of Math kindly helped pay for their registration.
Congratulations to three GT students who worked together as a team last fall to participate in an annual mathematical modeling challenge: SIMIODE VII and obtained an Outstanding Award for their work. I was their coach, which meant that I helped them register and prepare for the challenge, but wasn’t allowed to help them during the official challenge period.
The Outstanding Award is the highest possible honor for this mathematical modeling challenge.
The three students were enrolled in a Dual Enrollment program and are taking undergraduate math courses at Georgia Tech.
The GT School of Math kindly supported their participation by paying for their registration.
What is SIMIODE?
SIMIODE is an international student team challenge in which teams of students select one of three mathematical modeling problems. Each team is tasked with producing a mathematical model and summarizing their model in a video that is no longer than ten minutes.
The three mathematical problems that students can select are in the general area of (A); Chemistry/Life Sciences; (B) Physics/Engineering; and (C) Social Sciences/Humanities.
This year the challenge problems were titled:
Problem A: Introducing Stress
Problem B: The Mechanics of Suction Feeding
Problem C: People Ruin Everything
Students prepare a ten-minute video and post it as “unlisted” in YouTube for judges to score and render constructive comments.
This year the challenge problems were released on 23 October 2022 and team videos were due and posted on 14 November 2022 while judging was completed by 11 December 2022.
Complete information on SCUDEM VII 2022 can be found here.
SIMIODE VII Statistics
366 students participated, forming 142 three student (or less) teams, with 56 coaches. In some cases coaches worked with multiple teams. Several teams did not have coaches. 109 teams submitted a final ten-minute video for judging.
296 volunteer faculty and industry personnel served as judges. The judges rendered 870 team scores and constructive comments. This gave each team, on average, 8 judge scores and comments for a great deal of feedback through which students will grow with respect to their modeling abilities.
Overall, 27 of the 109 submissions obtained an outstanding award.
Team Submission
The SIMIODE YouTube channel has a channel with (most of) the presentations that obtained an outstanding award. The presentation that my students put together is below.
Congratulations to Royce, Adi, and Henry for their excellent work!
