Three undergraduate students from the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau (UM), namely Lo Ka In, Lei Sin Ian, and Lam Ut Ngo, received a second prize at the Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling of China (CUMCM). More than 22,000 teams participated in this year’s contest, and only 6 per cent of them received first or second prizes. It was the first time UM participated in the contest. The three winning students were led by Dr Liu Zhi, assistant professor from the Department of Mathematics.

The CUMCM is a national contest in mathematical modelling. It is also the largest mathematical modelling contest in the world. In 2014, it attracted more than 25,347 teams consisting of 70,000 students from 33 provinces and cities in China (including Hong Kong and Macao), Singapore, and the United States.

The UM team won the prize with their design of a “creative folding table”. By labelling the coordinates of some discrete points on the edges of the table using a 3-dimensional coordinate system and then creating an auto-run Matlab programme, the design enables the features of the table to display based on the parameters input by the customers according to their preferences.

The Department of Mathematics attaches great importance to improving students’ modelling abilities. Prior to this contest, some students from the department also won prizes at the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) in the US and a national contest for postgraduate students in China.