Recently, the results of the 2025 Mathematical Contest in Modeling/Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (MCM/ICM)have been announced. More than ten teams composed of ZJUI students have won multiple awards in the fierce competition against over 27,000 teams worldwide. According to incomplete statistics, ZJUI has won 6 Outstanding Winner awards (ranking in the top 1%), 12 Honorable Mention awards, and 18 Successful Participant awards this year.
The Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM) are among the world's most influential mathematical modeling competitions. Their problems cover a wide range of fields including economics, management, environment, resources, ecology, medicine, and security. The competitions are hosted by the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP).
The 2025 Mathematical Contest in Modeling/Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (MCM/ICM) took place from January 23 to 27, Eastern Time (U.S.). This year's contest attracted teams from more than 20 countries and regions, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Competing in teams of three, participants were required to complete all tasks within four days, ranging from building models, solving problems, verifying results to writing papers. This format aims to demonstrate the participants' abilities in researching issues, formulating solutions, as well as their team spirit.
Young talents, triumph at the first attempt
In this year's competition, two teams centered on ZJUI freshmen stood out from numerous participating teams and both won the highest honor of the competition — the Outstanding Winner award. Thefirst team comprised Xu Junhan (class of 2028 in Mechanical Engineering), Li Qi (class of 2027 in Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Xu Shurui (class of 2028 in Biomedical Sciences), and the second team included He Nuoyu (class of 2028 in Civil Engineering), Dong Jiacheng (class of 2028 in Civil Engineering) and Chen Yile (class of 2028 in Mechanical Engineering).
▲Certificate of Award for the team of Xu Junhan, Li Qi and Xu Shurui
The team of Xu Junhan, Li Qi and Xu Shurui chose Problem A, which requires participants to build an archaeological analysis model based on stair wear patterns. The aim is to assess the usage characteristics and construction information of historical stairs through quantitative analysis. The difficulty of this model lies in the need to realize the systematic integration of multiple factors under the premise of ensuring low cost and high operability, thus providing a reliable quantitative analysis tool for the dating and functional research of complex historical buildings.
During the competition, team members not only carried out interdisciplinary collaboration in terms of professional knowledge, but also demonstrated excellent practical coordination ability through their actions. When addressing the issue of the distribution of stepping positions on step surfaces, the team adopted a strategy that combined theory with practice. Xu Junhan and Li Qi repeatedly conducted on-site tests of going up and down stairs, accumulating a large amount of experimental data. Subsequently, Xu Junhan and Xu Shurui systematically reviewed domestic and foreign literature on the characteristics of pedestrian stepping behavior, providing a solid theoretical foundation for model building. Meanwhile, Li Qi gave full play to his expertise in mathematical statistics and rigorously derived a mathematical model for the distribution of stepping positions on step surfaces using probability distribution theory. Their close cooperation not only broke through the knowledge limitations of traditional single disciplines, but also led to innovative results with both theoretical depth and practical value through continuous ideological collisions and scheme iterations. Such interdisciplinary integration and complementary advantages enabled their research to stand out among numerous entries, ultimately winning the Outstanding Winner award of the competition.
▲Certificate of Award for the team of He Nuoyu, Dong Jiacheng and Chen Yile
The team of He Nuoyu, Dong Jiacheng and Chen Yile chose Problem B, which requires building a sustainable tourism management model. Taking Juneau, Alaska as a case study, the problem demands optimizing the number of tourists, income distribution and environmental protection investment strategies to balance the economic benefits of tourism, ecological protection and community quality of life. Meanwhile, it also requires providing policy adaptation plans for other areas suffering from overtourism.
As a team of first-year undergraduates participating in the contest for the first time, they initially felt at a loss about how to reasonably allocate tasks such as modeling, programming, and paper writing due to their lack of experience. Meanwhile, they had no idea about the time planning for the four-day and three-night competition schedule.
However, they quickly adjusted themselves and got into the preparation state. After many heated discussions, they decided to adopt the preparation strategy of "first general knowledge, then specialization": in the 1-2 weeks before the contest, all members studied the basic knowledge of mathematical modeling, programming skills, and paper writing norms together to ensure that everyone had an overall understanding of the entire competition process. After mastering the necessary basic knowledge, they formed specific divisions of labor according to their respective interests and expertise.
This unique preparation method not only enabled each member to have cross-field understanding ability but also laid the foundation for seamless team collaboration during the official contest.
▲A group photo of the team consisting of He Nuoyu, Chen Yile and Dong Jiacheng taken in the early morning after completing the competition.
During the competition, the team of He Nuoyu, Dong Jiacheng, and Chen Yile focused on in-depth optimization of the system dynamics model. Through over a hundred parameter calibrations and simulation tests, they significantly improved the model's accuracy and stability. To verify the model's universality, the team selected Sanya City as an empirical research object for application analysis. The model's operation results showed that its output data highly matched Sanya's actual tourism data, indicating that this strategy can not only accurately predict tourism development trends but also tailor sustainable development strategies for both Sanya and Juneau. Based on the model analysis, they put forward suggestions with significant practical application value, including adjustments to fiscal and taxation policies, optimization of infrastructure, and protection of ecological environment. With their excellent performance, they finally achieved the Outstanding Winner award in the competition.
Fully loaded with gains, stirring deep sentiments of gratitude
After the competition, the participating students all expressed that their gains far exceeded expectations. Through this competition, the students not only improved their abilities in team collaboration and on-the-spot adaptability, but also made significant breakthroughs in professional literacy and innovative thinking. "This competition has brought us abundant gains. When faced with open-ended practical problems, we have achieved tangible improvements in mathematical modeling, programming implementation, and paper writing. Especially in the intense and limited competition time, we learned how to better divide work and cooperate with each other. Everyone gave full play to their respective expertise, and when problems arose, we discussed solutions together. This experience of team collaboration has enabled us to grow."
In addition, the students are full of gratitude for the all-round support provided by the Institute. "We are deeply grateful to ZJUI for offering us an excellent learning environment and abundant resources. ZJUI's interdisciplinary training program enables us to integrate multi-dimensional perspectives from different majors to analyze problems. The systematic training in Rhetoric 101 (Principles of Writing) and Rhetoric 102 (Principles of Research) has equipped us with academic English writing skills, allowing us to complete English academic papers more standardly and efficiently. Moreover, during the preparation for the competition, the pre-contest experience exchange meeting for the MCM/ICM benefited us a lot. The selfless sharing of practical experience and skills by senior students who won awards in previous years effectively helped us avoid common misunderstandings."
▲Experience sharing meeting for the MCM/ICM
Finally, they also specially expressed their gratitude to the ZJUI professor team for their professional guidance during the preparation for the competition. Among them, the team of He Nuoyu, Dong Jiacheng and Chen Yile particularly thanked Associate Professor Wee-Liat Ong for his meticulous teaching. From the search for learning materials to suggestions on model optimization, and from the construction of the paper framework to the standards of academic expression, Professor Wee-Liat Ong 's detailed pre-competition guidance provided strong support for the team's successful award.
As of 2025, undergraduate students from ZJUI have maintained excellent performance in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling/Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (MCM/ICM) for eight consecutive years. This series of outstanding achievements not only demonstrates students' solid professional knowledge and ability to solve problems through interdisciplinary approaches but also reflects the remarkable effectiveness of ZJUI's international engineering interdisciplinary training system. Relying on the unique advantages of Sino-foreign cooperative education, ZJUI continues to provide strong support for cultivating globally competitive engineering talents through initiatives such as innovating interdisciplinary curriculum systems, strengthening practical teaching, and building international exchange platforms.
