Sitan "Stan" Chen, a math titan at Northview High School in Johns Creek, has added another impressive accolade to his resume.
Chen, 16, returned to metro Atlanta this week with his second straight scholarship award from the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology for solving a complex graphing problem that took him months to research. He won $40,000 for his answer, which used methods that could be applied in engineering.
“My research has applications in optimizing circuit design in manufacturing industrial systems,” said Chen, who is a senior with a perfect SAT score.
Last school year, Chen led a team that shared a $20,000 prize for tackling a math challenge involving complex number functions that he says has stumped mathematicians for 70 years. He helped develop a new method to approach it, solving multiple steps at once instead of one at a time.
Chen was among the "mathletes" defending their research at the 2011 Siemens Competition, a prestigious national tournament in Washington, D.C., for high school scholars. This year a record 2,436 students registered for the competition and submitted 1,541 projects. Among the hopefuls, 317 were named as semifinalists.
Regionals were judged by a math and science A-list: California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to name a few.
Chen set a record as the first student in the event's 13-year history to receive back-to-back Siemens Competition national awards.
His parents and math and music tutors, Guanghua "James" Chen and Jinghong Ye, were ecstatic.
“This year, he got an achievement that was even better than last year. It’s fantastic,” said his dad, who runs Alltop School in Johns Creek and has a Ph.D. in math. “I am very proud of him."
And so is Stan Chen's principal.
"That is quite a feat,” said Paul Brannon, who heads Northview High. “He’s a great young man who put a lot of hard work into it and it paid off.”
Math isn't Chen's only passion. He also excels at piano and violin and has been invited to share his gift at Carnegie Hall as a music competition champ. His last piano performance there was in late November.
For his next feat, Chen is hoping to land at the college of his choice. Perhaps the Ivy League, or a prominent science university like Georgia Tech or MIT. (It was at MIT's Research Science Institute over the summer where he began to tackle the Siemens math problem.)
Chen says he will continue to study math and science in college and possibly minor in music. Or just take lessons.
"This year has really been amazing," he said.
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