UNSW student tops the country in Simon Marais Maths Comp
Published on the 11 Dec 2018
UNSW student Ruichen Jiang has placed first in Australia in the 2018 Simon Marais Mathematics Competition.
Ruichen (pictured left) also achieved joint second place overall in this year's competition, which attracted 891 participants from universities in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
In addition to prizes awarded by the competition, the School of Mathematics and Statistics is awarding prizes to the best performance by UNSW competitors. Three $1000 prizes are awarded by the School for the best female, best male and best pair performances.
The top female UNSW competitor was Lisa Zhuang, and the best UNSW pair performance was by Aaron Hassan and Andy Bao. 
Other high performing students from UNSW included Edwin Suyitno, Cheuk Hei Chesta Wu, Robert Yi Zhong Tan, Zhengyao Zhu, Yihui Fu & Kaiyan Huang (performing in a pair) and Alexander Patterson & Anthony Hannigan (performing in a pair).
Of participating universities, UNSW ranked fifth overall this year, and second in Australia.
The Simon Marais Mathematics Competition is an annual competition that aims to encourage creative mathematical problem-solving among undergraduate students, identify talented students across the Asia-Pacific region, forge links between academics in the region, and promote healthy competition among students as well as between universities.
Dr Simon Marais was a South African-born physicist who became a prominent contrarian asset manager in South Africa and later Australia. He maintained a life-long passionate interest in mathematics and mathematical problem solving after completing a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University in 1991.
A very big congratulations to our students!