Top Scores at ISMAA Contest

Math Club members at a meeting, Spring 2005
Jon Beagley is 2nd from left and Keith Campbell is 3rd from left

Each year at the Illinois Section of the MAA (ISMAA) meeting, there is a student competition, usually held in the late afternoon on a Friday. On April 4, 2008, the IIT team of Kevin Ventullo, Young Ju Jo, and Anil Vasireddi took first place, earning each of them a copy of Mathematica. The IIT team of Chris Mitillos, Laura Rodriguez-Mosquera, and Jeffrey Stanford took third place overall, and the team of Jon Beagley, Keith Campbell, and Tony Parrillo was not far behind. 10 students from IIT attended the conference, along with faculty advisor Michael Pelsmajer who gave a talk on Crossing Numbers and Graphs with Rotation Systems.

Twelve students from the math club traveled to the 2007 Illinois MAA Meeting. They attended a great plenary session by Joseph Gallian, participated in a math competition, and fixed a flat tire on a rented 12-passenger van in under half an hour. IIT teams placed 2nd (Christos Miltillos, Laura Rodriguez-Mosquera, Jeffrey Stanford) and 3rd (Young Cho, Jongyon Kim, Jongmin Lim) overall this year—placing teams in the top five for the third straight year.

Jon Beagley gave a student research talk at the meeting. Professor Kaul also attended, and he gave an hour-long invited talk on Breaking Symmetries in Graphs.

At the 2006 Illinois MAA Meeting, IIT teams took 1st place (Jonathan Beagley, Keith Campbell, Anthony Parillo), tied for 2nd place (Laura Rodriguez Masquera, Jeffrey Stanford, Christos Mitillos) with another team, and took 4th place (Elliot Barlow, Xuan Kang). 15 students in total attended that meeting. At the 2005 ISMAA meeting we participated in this competition and one of our teams took fourth place. The Math Club practices or has a special event about once a week.