For each of the past three years, a team of dedicated Bocconi undergraduate students has stepped up to participate in the COMAP's (Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications) Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). This prestigious competition challenges high school and college undergraduates from around the globe to analyze, model, solve, and present solution reports to open-ended application problems.

COMAP is also sponsored by INFORMS, the American Mathematical Society, and the American Statistical Association – renowned organizations with which many of our professors are associated.

This year, the competition saw an impressive 18,525 teams from across the world. We are thrilled to announce that, for the first time, our team has earned the esteemed distinction of Meritorious Winner—an honor achieved by only 6% of all participants.

The successful team consisted of three talented students:

• Filippo Reina
• Riccardo Crespi
• Lorenzo Pastorelli

Under the mentorship of Professor Dovid Fein, the team chose to tackle the data insights problem, which involved modeling the flow of a tennis match. Their approach to this complex problem was both innovative and diverse, employing a range of techniques from logistic regression to recurrent neural networks and Markov chains.

The recognition of Meritorious Winner is a significant achievement and a testament to the hard work of Filippo, Riccardo, and Lorenzo.

These competitions highlight the importance of research, analytics, and applied intelligence, as well as time management and strategic problem solving. The accomplishment of our students not only brings pride to Bocconi University – in particular our Decision Sciences Department – but also serves as an inspiration to future teams.