Palo Alto High School senior Lynnelle Ye is $50,000 richer after winning second place on Dec. 7 in the National Finals of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology in New York City.

Ye, who was one of only six people in the individual category to advance from the Regional Finals in November, presented her project, titled Chomp on Graphs and Subsets, at the nationally televised awards ceremony held at New York University.
Click here to view her presentation.

The prizes ranged from $10,000 in scholarship money to the grand prize of $100,000. Senior Rouyi Jiang from Ward Melville High School in East Setauket, New York, took first place.

Though shocked to learn that she had advanced initially to the National Finals, Ye was even more surprised when the judges announced their decision.

“I really enjoyed working on my project and love my topic, but the fact that this obscure little paper is wearing a ‘Siemens runner-up’ hat is hard to get used to,” Ye said.

Ye’s all-expense paid trip, which took place from Dec. 3-7, included a stay at the Embassy Suites hotel and other treats.

“In addition to the actual competition, Siemens treated us to all sorts of cool stuff, notably watching Mary Poppins on Broadway,” Ye said.

Added Ye, “Getting to know the other competitors was definitely the best part.”

With the competition over, Ye has decided to take a break from the type of intense work that earned her the prize. That does not mean her project, which deals with a branch of mathematics known as game theory, is going to be shelved any time soon.

“I still have a lot of ideas for expanding this project,” Ye said. “Once I’m done with that, I don’t have anything particularly in mind, but I definitely want to do more research somewhere, somehow.”