Gr 12 student Madeleine has been named a top 40 world scholar in the esteemed U.S. competition Regeneron Science Talent Search. Her selection as scholar is a great honor, and signifies her talent and promise in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She joins a distinguished group of alumni that includes Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, entrepreneurs and innovators who, just like her, were named among the top 40 high school seniors in this program.

To know more about the paper she published, here is her layperson summary:

"Take a piece of string, tie it in a knot, and glue the ends together. The result is something that cannot be untied. This is a mathematical knot. Much of knot theory is based in trying to distinguish two given knots. To do so, mathematicians look at knot invariants, which are properties of a knot that do not vary when the knot is stretched or deformed. We look at a particular invariant called the knot mosaic number. We improve our ability to compute the knot mosaic number of certain knots and links. In particular, we show that a well known knot with 8 crossings, the 8_3 knot, cannot be represented on a 6 × 6 board with only 8 crossing tiles."