At the start of the year schools from across the country were challenged by the University's Department of Engineering Mathematics to use their mathematics skills to solve an important real-world problem and win £1,000.

The winners of the competition were Joseph Taylor, Edward Furlong, Anthony Rajecki­-Doyle, and Tom Crossley, from Greenhead College in Huddersfield.

The expert judges from the department were particularly impressed by the team's excellent and thorough piece of work, which successfully addressed a very wide range of different aspects of the problem, and described them all very clearly and convincingly.

Submissions from two teams were recognised as highly commended: Sally Rice, Nehemiah Tang Campbell, Emily Day Wilson, and Ruth Day from The Grey Coat Hospital Sixth Form, and Will Catton, Ben Borrowdale, Pierre Tabet, Archie McColl, Paul Lavender-Jones, and Josh Short from Marlborough College.

The competition was inspired by the emerging area of precision agriculture, and challenged students to find the most efficient flight path for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to automatically survey a field.

Dr Martin Homer, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Engineering Mathematics, said "This year's entries to the Engineering Mathematics challenge were stronger than ever, and choosing the winner was a very difficult task. We were really impressed by the range of different approaches and the level of mathematical sophistication. Every submission showed an excellent insight into how mathematics can be used to understand a real-world problem, and everyone who entered should be proud of what they've achieved.  We hope they enjoyed working on the mathematical modelling challenge as much as we enjoyed reading their reports!"

The Engineering Mathematics challenge is the fourth in a series of annual events delivered by the department. The challenge for the 2017 competition is scheduled to be announced later this year.