Our Story


A Brief Description of Our Team, Mission, and Core Values

Our Team

Leadership & MAO Reps

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Kalyan Cherukuri
Mu Alpha Theta President

Kalyan is a senior at IMSA and the Mu Alpha Theta President. In his free time, he enjoys exploring the IMSA campus and meeting new people; more often than not, he can be seen rushing to make it to first mod on time.

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Sonit Sahoo
Senior MAO Rep

Hey, I'm Sonit - a senior in 1504. I’ve loved math ever since I was little and I’ve been doing competition math since 4th grade, but lately I’ve gotten into pure math. Recently, I’ve participated in orals at ICTM. Outside of math, I’m interested in computer science, robotics, and physics.

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Samhitha Kamatala
Senior MAO Rep

Samhitha is a senior attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. Taking the JHMC in middle school helped her discover a passion for mathematics. She hopes to use this competition to spread interest in math. Outside of school, she can be found experimenting with new tunes on the oboe, learning a new dance choreography, or messing around in the kitchen.

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Jaylin Park
Junior MAO Rep

Jaylin is a junior at IMSA. Her passion for competition math started by joining the math team in middle school. She is always excited to learn more about math, and hopes to encourage others to be as well. In her free time she likes to listen to music, take sky pictures, go for a run, or try to sneak in a nap before her next class.

JHMC Chairs

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Nara Feng
JHMC Chair

Nara is a senior at IMSA. She loves exploring various competition math topics. Outside of math, she enjoys playing badminton, touching grass, and messing with her cat. In her free time, she can often be found "locking in" (cackling) with her friends in the IRC.

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Akhil Narayanan
Assistant JHMC Chair

Hi, I’m Akhil, a junior at IMSA and a JHMC Assistant Chair. I’ve been doing competition math since elementary school, and I’m looking forward to helping others reach their math goals. In my free time, I like to go running, play cello, and study biology. You can usually find me studying or hanging out with friends.

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Shruti Vavilala
Assistant JHMC Chair

Shruti is a junior at IMSA. She enjoys exploring interesting concepts in math and helping make math feel more approachable for younger students. Outside of math, she is interested in machine learning and computational modeling. In her free time, she can usually be found playing the flute, taking care of her plants, or attempting to get work done at IN2.

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Jessica Li
Assistant JHMC Chair

Jessica is a junior at IMSA. She does competition math and is excited to be an assistant JHMC chair this year! She has participated in various competitions such as ARML, ICTM, and AMC. Some of her other hobbies include drawing, reading, and baking.

Math Chairs

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Ian Wang
Math Chair

Hi, my name is Ian Wang! I am in the IMSA class of 2027, and some of my interests include computer science, mathematics, and robotics! In my spare time I like to play and watch soccer. Visit ianwa09.github.io for more information about me!

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Derrick Xianto
Assistant Math Chair

Hello, I'm Derrick Xianto, a student in the class of 2028. I'm especially interested in physics and math. I also play the piano, violin, and have recently started soccer.

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Melanie Ma
Assistant Math Chair

Melanie is a junior at IMSA who loves both exploratory and competition math. Outside of math, she is an ardent fan of the arts -- if she’s not doing math, it is very likely she is writing poetry, oil painting, or listening to experimental music. She also enjoys robotics, going on long walks, and bothering her friends at IN2.

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Advait Kamath
Assistant Math Chair

Hello, I am Advait Kamath. I really enjoy doing math and I'm always free to help!

Our Mission

What needs must be addressed?

Ever since the first IMSA JHMC was held decades ago, our mission and core values have remained unchanged. We continue to believe that middle school is an oft-neglected but critical formative period for STEM-oriented students, during which a student's positive or negative experiences have an outsize impact on their future educational attainment. This is backed up by results from peer-reviewed studies: for example, Wang and Goldschmidt 2003 finds that differences in mathematical opportunities during middle school translates to increasing educational inequity into high school.

We believe that creating more opportunities for students to have positive experiences with mathematics will not only increase equity for disadvantaged students but also translate into better academic and career outcomes across the board for all participants. This is a deeply personal issue for many of us: almost all of the contest organizers are where we are today in no small part due to opportunities like MATHCOUNTS and the AMC 8, which gave us an outlet to have fun with STEM.

How do we improve on existing programs?

We believe that an effective mathematics outreach program has two key traits: first, it makes math fun, and second, it gives students the opportunity to discover deep insights on their own. We believe that this second trait can't be achieved by simply "skimming the surface" of mathematics: while the gems of discovery might not be buried deep, students need to seek them out in extended problem-solving experiences, experiences which contests like the AMC 8 don't provide.

Hence, we seek to expand on more conventional contest-math rounds in JHMC by diving deeper with our unique Creative Thinking round, where students solve short sets of themed problems extending beyond the normal middle school curriculum. This lets students discover deeper insights than what other middle school contests provide. We believe that this opportunity, provided during the critical time of middle school, among the relatively few nationwide math contests targeting this demographic, will significantly benefit both the math community and our country at large.

For the foregoing reasons, we have decided on the following for the JHMC mission statement:

"The IMSA Junior High Mathematics Competition aims to foster genuine interest in STEM by providing high-quality, intriguing problems across a wide breadth and depth to a diverse community of students at the middle school level."

Our Values

Our core values are the heart of our competition, making it the best it could possibly be.

  • Accessibility: We want this opportunity to be accessible to students from around the country, giving everyone an equal chance to succeed. No matter where you're from or where you're at in your mathematics journey, we want you to feel welcome at the Junior High Mathematics Competition.
  • Community: We want to both be one integral part of the larger middle-school mathematics community and develop our own sense of family around JHMC. We hope to foster a shared love of mathematics to bring people closer together.
  • Quality: We work hard to ensure that our questions are suitable for this competition, hitting the sweet spot in terms of difficulty so that this contest is both enjoyable and enriching for participants of all levels.