Xunlei Qian, a third-year student from the Department of Mathematics, teamed up with Boxun Yan (Department of Electrical Engineering) and Chen Wang (Department of Computer Science), won the second prize in the Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling (CUMCM) 2019, under the supervision by Dr Xianpeng Hu, Assistant Professor of the Department of Mathematics.

CUMCM is an annual national contest organized by China Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which is an organization supervised by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China. The contest requires participating teams to develop mathematical and/or computer models to solve simplified real-world problems in engineering, management, etc., in three days. The purpose is to improve undergraduates’ understanding of mathematics, especially mathematical modeling and mathematical software, and to enhance their motivation for studying mathematics while cultivating their creativity and overall ability.

This year, the contest has attracted over 42,900 teams from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.