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Math Team Claims Third Place Globally at Elite Math Modeling Challenge

Math Team Claims Third Place Globally at Elite Math Modeling Challenge

2026PBMathM3ChallengeHEROFinal

A team of five elite mathematicians from American Heritage Schools, Palm Beach Campus, secured a third-place world finish at the final event of the 2026 MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (M3 Challenge) in New York City. The prestigious international competition, which awarded our students $10,000 in college scholarships, requires participants to apply advanced statistical and computational analysis to solve complex, real-world social phenomena.

Global Scale and Rigorous Evaluation

The M3 Challenge, organized by the Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and sponsored by MathWorks, drew participation from over 3,430 top-tier students forming 770 international teams. Following a rigorous eight-week, three-round blind judging process conducted by 120 professional applied mathematicians, the field was narrowed down to just nine finalist teams representing the United States, England, and Wales.

The intensive format required students to spend 14 consecutive hours researching, organizing data, and writing a comprehensive solution paper. This year's prompt challenged teams to analyze and predict the personal, societal, and financial effects of mobile and online sports gambling, an industry that has expanded exponentially over the past decade.

The Palm Beach campus cohort advanced to the live presentation round before an expert panel of validation judges at the final event in New York City, earning a spot on the global podium:

M3 Challenge Third-Place Winners ($10,000 Scholarship Award)

  • Siyuan Du
  • Rayan Kha
  • Joseph Levenston
  • Rishan Thangaraj
  • David Zapata

Team Coach: Derek Rampal

The M3 Challenge stands apart from traditional computation contests by demanding that students quantify unorganized parameters and build predictive mathematical frameworks from scratch. By securing a third-place finish globally, outperforming elite legacy programs such as Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and Stuyvesant High School, the American Heritage Math Team exhibited mastery of data science and technical computing. This international achievement underscores the campus's commitment to providing a rigorous quantitative foundation that prepares the next generation of data scientists, engineers, and financial analysts.