Mathworks faculty mentor eight Siemens semi-finalists

Date of Release: 1/06/2006

SAN MARCOS—Eight students from the Mathworks Honors Summer Math Camp (HSMC) at Texas State University-San Marcos have been named semi-finalists in the 2005 Siemens Competition.

The students worked in teams on original research projects during the summer with a faculty mentor from Texas State Department of Mathematics. Students and mentors are:

* Joseph Lee (Hudson High School, Hudson) and Elysia Sheu (Lawrence E. Elkins High School, Missouri City), “Extremal Cayley Graphs of Finite Cyclic Groups,” semi-finalists. Mentor: Xingde Jia.
* Edward Schmerling (Lyndon B. Johnson High School, Austin), Jennifer Schmerling (Lyndon B. Johnson High School, Austin), and Erik Feng (Plano East Senior High School, Plano), “Error Correction in Searching and Sorting Algorithms,” regional finalists. Mentor: Jian Shen.
* Alisha Seam (Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, Denton), Wesley Chen (Lyndon B. Johnson High School, Austin), and Stephanie Chan (William P. Clements High School, Sugar Land), “Eccentricity sequences of graphs,” regional finalists. Mentor: Daniela Ferrero.

The team of Edward Schmerling, Jennifer Schmerling and Feng was also named regional finalists and participated in the regional finals at MIT Nov. 18-19. The team of Seam, Chen and Chan was also named as regional finalists and participated in the regional finals at the University of Texas.

The HSMC is a six-week residential program in mathematics whose goal is to develop talented students in mathematics. The HSMC is part of Texas Mathworks, which also sponsors Junior Summer Math Camps for younger students. Mathworks goal is to prepare all students to do higher level math and science.

Support for the program has been provided by the American Math Society Epsilon Fund, National Science Foundation, Intel, Siemens Foundation, Kodosky Foundation and others. Over the past five years, 43 HSMC students have been named as semi-finalists and two teams (six students) have continued on to become national finalists (top six in the country).

For more information about the HSMC, contact Max Warshauer at (512) 245-3439, or see the web at www.txstate.edu/mathworks.