Education | UM student teams win prizes in regional math modeling contest

Two student teams from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Macau (UM) were awarded second prizes at the 14th Contemporary Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modeling (CUMCM). A total of four UM teams, comprised of six students, participated in the contest.

The CUMCM is a national contest in the mathematical modeling field organized by the China Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

According to a statement issued by the UM, this year’s contest attracted more than 100,000 students in 31,199 teams, of which 6.9 percent received first or second prizes. The participating teams were from a total of 1,367 universities in China and Singapore.

For their submission, the two UM teams assessed the effect of open housing estates on traffic conditions on surrounding roads, as well as collected real-time data from both open and closed housing estates in Shanghai and Beijing.

By using simulation software, they produced indices for quantitative evaluation and provided suggestions to departments responsible for urban planning and transport management based on the results. This year marks the third consecutive year that participating UM teams have been awarded prizes.

This year, the Department of Mathematics established a committee of mathematical modeling. The committee aims to provide consultancy and support to students in the field.

In addition to the CUMCM, students from the Department of Mathematics have won prizes at various other modeling contests held in the United States and China, including third prize in the 2016 University Students’ Statistical Project Competition of Macau.

PHD candidate’s thesis leads to IEEE papers

PHD candidate Arshad Hussain from the State Key Laboratory of Analog and Mixed-Signal VLSI (AMS-VLSI Lab) at the University of Macau has completed his doctoral oral defense, with external examiners commending his PhD dissertation. The thesis, titled “High-Resolution Passive and Active-Passive Switched-Capacitor Delta-Sigma Modulator Design Techniques in Nanoscale CMOS”, has been featured in an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) SCI journal paper and two IEEE conference papers.