California Students Among National Finalists in Siemens Competition

Jan. 2010

Western News

Individual Finalist Lynnelle Ye

Lynnelle Ye of Palo Alto, Calif., received a $50,000 scholarship as a finalist in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology in New York City on Dec. 7, 2009. The team of Ryan Lindeborg of Laguna Niguel, Calif., and Andrew James Swoboda of Oakton, Va., shared a $10,000 scholarship as finalists in the team competition.

Ye, a senior at Palo Alto High School, won the scholarship for her mathematics project in the field of game theory. Game theory is applied in fields ranging from economics to engineering, to study systems where individuals compete in a shared environment. The project, titled Chomp on Graphs and Subsets, studied games in which two players take turns to eliminate nodes or edges of a graph. The player to remove the graph's last node wins the game. The aim of the research was to understand the best possible strategy for playing this game and to determine which player will win from each starting graph when each plays her best possible strategy.

“Ms. Ye demonstrated a good understanding of prior research. She was able to build on tools developed by earlier researchers to solve a number of interesting open cases,” said Michelle Effros, professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. “Even seemingly simple games like graph chomp can be strikingly difficult to analyze mathematically. Studying this type of question helps us to build tools for reasoning about strategic behavior in more complicated environments.”

Team Finalists ANdrew James Swoboda and Ryan Lindeborg

Lindeborg, a sophomore at Dana Hills High School in Dana Point, Calif., and Swoboda, a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., were honored for their materials science project, titled Optimization of Platinum Nanoparticle Deposition on Nafion Membranes, looked at a novel method to maximize efficient platinum catalyst loading and enhance the performance of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. Among other findings, the research showcased a method to decrease the use of platinum — a very expensive metal — within the PEM fuel cell by 50 percent, thereby making the technology more economical as well as more scientifically approachable.

“The team research was impressive because it created a pathway to a better and more efficient operation of this particular fuel cell, which is a good problem to be thinking about given the changing energy landscape,” said Julia R. Greer, assistant professor of materials science at the California Institute of Technology. “In addition to having very clean, clearly described and well-analyzed research, the teamwork here was impressive, which demonstrated a very important trait the students share with true scientific research teams to the judges.”

The Siemens Competition was launched in 1998 to recognize America’s best and brightest math and science students. The annual competition is administered by the College Board and judged by a panel of nationally renowned scientists and mathematicians, and this year was headed by lead judge Thomas Jones, a prominent scientist, author, pilot and former NASA astronaut. In another record-setting year, 2,151 students registered to enter the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology in 2009, for a total of 1,348 project submissions, which is a 14 percent increase in project submissions from 2008 and more than a 12 percent increase in the number of registrations. For more information, visit the Siemens Foundation on the Web. In April, the College Board will welcome Jennifer Harper-Taylor, vice president of the Siemens Foundation, as a keynote speaker at the College Board’s A Dream Deferred™ conference in Atlanta.