Oakton Grads Earn International Recognition for Math Project

For recent Virginia Tech graduates Will Frey and Patrick O’Neil, math is not simply a required course to struggle through.

Instead, the Oakton High graduates have dedicated hours to not only studying it, but also participating in competitions.

Frey and O'Neil, along with fellow Virginia Tech mathematics major Evan Menchini, earned themselves a rare “Outstanding” rating at the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM), an international competition, in February. Theirs was one of only eight teams worldwide out of 2,775 to receive top honors, and they presented their project at the Mathematical Association of America MathFest conference in Lexington, Ken., in early August.

“While most other mathematics competitions have students answer questions with a unique solution, the MCM allows students to approach a problem however they deem fit,” O’Neil said.

In order to achieve their high rating, the team had to design of a VHF radio network able to support 1,000 users. They were given four days.

The trio had been a team for three years, so they felt comfortable with the contest requirements and each other, confident they could work together efficiently.

“The members of our team knew each others’ strengths and weaknesses so well that after the first night of brainstorming, specific tasks could be quickly assigned to the correct individuals,” said John Rossi, professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech.  

Rossi served as the team adviser, but because of the students’ extensive experience with the contest, he said had little impact on the final solution, which consisted of two models of a potential radio network. 

“The first model was named the ‘Bender’ Snaking Model, named after Patrick's roommate's dog Bender,” Frey said. “We felt this snaking behavior [of the model] was a lot like Bender.” 

Rossi attributes the success of his students’ contest entry to its originality. He notes that while the majority of the other teams followed the problem parameters strictly and designed their solutions for exactly 1,000 users, his team catered their network toward 1,200 users. 

“This meant that the optimization algorithm used could ignore 200 outliers and consequently it converged very quickly to a solution,” he said.

On top of their success with the modeling project, the team wrote a paper that the Mathematical Association of America presented with first prize.

“The [MAA MathFest] conference was a great experience and being surrounded by so many mathematicians in one place is certainly an experience like no other,” Frey said. “The sheer number of presentations and the diversity of their content was simply amazing.”  

Both Frey and O’Neil, however, discovered passions for science before engaging in math. They agree that in order to fully understand sciences such as physics, which is the field Frey developed an interest in, math had to come first.  

“I've always been interested in science; mathematics is the language of science,” O’Neil said. “I began studying math to learn the tools necessary for other fields of science, but math ended up being far more interesting than I had originally imagined.”

Frey is currently continuing his studies in math and science as a graduate student in the Virginia Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering department. He still plans to keep in touch with the MCM.

“I will be helping Dr. Lizette Zietsman once the MCM ball starts rolling again in February in a mentor and adviser capacity, sharing my observations and experiences from the past three years we've competed,” Frey said.