The MathFest is MAA’s annual national conference, attended by over 1400 professors, teachers, and researchers specialized in the area of mathematics. Calvin was one of only 5 high school students in the entire nation to be invited to present his research poster at the conference. His research covers pest control, which is an important facet of modern agriculture involving complex variables such as pest movement and their interactions with other animals, pesticides, and their environment. To optimize pest control, reduce costs, and minimize harm to the environment, it would be helpful to have a generalizable mathematical model of the dynamics of pest behavior. While such mathematical models exist, they currently do not take into account important variables such as the spatial distribution of pests among crops and the periodicity of pest-environment interactions. In their work, Calvin and his team substantially augment the sophistication of these mathematical models by taking these factors into account. Using their model, they show that certain variables more strongly affect the success of pest control, as well as identifying strategies to optimize these variables. They offer practical methods of pest source control based on our computational modeling results. Ultimately, their hope is that the model may be adapted for more efficient and efficacious pest control in the future.

Calvin is also an active member on La Salle’s Jazz band, and is actively engaged in community service to fundraise for elderly with Alzimers’ diseases. He also serves as a voluntary tutor and mentor to elementary and middle school students on Math studies. He continues his research this year and his career goal is to become a NASA scientist and a La Salle Math teacher because he is proud of being a Lancer and he wants to share his passion/knowledge with more La Salle students in the future.