Simon’s Rock Mathematics Team Achieves Outstanding Rank in SCUDEM VIII Competition

Ming Gong, Anthony Chang, and Paul Rose

A small yet mighty team of Bard College at Simon’s Rock students were honored with the most prestigious prize from the prominent mathematics competition SCUDEM VIII 2023 challenge.

“SCUDEM,” which stands for SIMIODE Challenge Using Differential Equations Modeling,” is a three-student group modeling challenge that runs over multiple days culminating in a ten-minute video which is reviewed by at least three judges. The hosts of the illustrious challenge were the ambitious project SIMIODE,” the Systemic Initiative for Modeling Investigations & Opportunities with Differential Equations,which functions as an open-community of instructors and students devoted to using models to teach and learn differential equations.

During the fall 2023 semester, the Simon’s Rock team of three successful Upper Level Math/ Computer Science students — Ming Gong, Anthony Chang, and Paul Rose — received the highest grade for their SCUDEM VIII submission: an “Outstanding” rank for their presentation on the solution to their assigned abstract “Dog Cannot Catch — Modeling Experience to Predicting Dog Catching Behavior.”

During SCUDEM trials, participating teams are ranked on a scale of “Successful,” “Meritorious" and “Outstanding” while Outstanding teams are then invited to post their videos publicly and have the chance to publish their work in an undergraduate math research journal.

Following their victory at SCUDEM VIII 2023, Gong, Chang and Rose were promptly accepted to present on their research-based solution in the SIMIODE EXPO 2024 on Saturday, February 10th.

The video of the students’ presentation can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khACu4dEOd8