Finalist Award Team: Ao Jingke, Yang Bowen, Guan Huai

Looking back on this journey, the most valuable part was not the award itself but every moment of pushing our limits alongside my teammates. First, it was the power of teamwork. Second, it was the courage to challenge boundaries. Mathematical modeling is a journey with no predefined answers—a bold exploration into the unknown. It was the combination of big-picture thinking, attention to detail, and mutual trust that allowed our team to withstand the pressure at the last moment and polish our paper to perfection.

Finalist Award Team: Zhu Yixin, Jia Yizhen, He Xuchen

Looking back on our first MCM experience, the most memorable moments were not the surprise of seeing our results but the 15-hour daily Tencent Meetings across three time zones; the cheers when inspiration struck during late-night problem-solving; the emergency fixes when we discovered model flaws on the last day; the frustration and persistence when the code kept failing; and the shared document cursors blinking in the early hours of New Year’s Eve, culminating in the ceremonial submission at sunrise.

For three beginners, the competition was full of challenges, but we maintained an optimistic attitude, tackled difficulties head-on, and completed this new attempt with a reasonable model and a clear, understandable paper. When we saw our team number—repeated so many times—in the winners’ list, we were as thrilled as if we were in a dream we never wanted to wake from. But every unbelievable miracle was traceable to those exhausting nights, the silent companionship, and the cycle of tearing down and rebuilding. It was these moments that turned the dream into reality.