Seven UTSA students recently participated in the 2019 Putnam Competition. Caleb Watson, a Chemical Engineering major and Math minor, Aaron Mendlovitz, a Math & Biomedical Engineering dual major, and Rudy Lozano, a Math & Biomedical Engineering dual major, were the top scorers whose performances secured UTSA’s rank of 131 out of 488 institutions in the United States and Canada. Reece Willoughby, a Math major, Christian Fifi Culp, a Computer Engineering major and Math minor, Ray Hagimoto, a Physics major, and José Vega, a Physics major, also participated in the competition.

The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition is the leading university-level competition of its kind for undergraduate students in the United States and Canada. On the day of the competition, participants work individually on 12 challenging mathematical problems. An institution’s three highest-scoring participants determine its rank. According to Eduardo Dueñez, Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department and Putnam mentor, the five students who scored points in the 2019 competition represent a UTSA record. "As a testament to the exam’s difficulty, about 40% of contestants scored 0 points, and only half of the competitors scored two or more points," he added.

– Lauren Moriarty