Stuyvesant High School senior Katherine Rose Banks won fourth place and 25,000 dollars of scholarship money on Tuesday, March 11 from the Intel Corporation and Society for Science & the Public for her paper on combinatorial geometry. According to Principal Stanley Teitel, Banks is the first Stuyvesant student to make it so far in the competition.

“I didn’t expect it at all,” Banks said.

Banks’ project proved Stanley Rabinowitz’s conjecture which states that a convex lattice polygon with nine vertices cannot have exactly eight or nine interior lattice points. A lattice polygon is a polygon whose vertices have integer coordinates known as lattice points.

“I’m proud of what she did,” Teitel said. “It only goes to show that girls can do just as well as boys in mathematics.”

This year, Stuyvesant received 11,000 dollars for the 11 semifinalists and four finalists in the competition.

In addition to winning 25,000 dollars of scholarship money, Banks received a free Intel laptop.

A unique aspect of Banks’ s project is that she worked without an official mentor. However, she did receive some help from computer science and Intel research class teacher Peter Brooks. “[He] gave me a step in the general area that I worked in, and I started reading papers in that area,” Banks said.

“She didn’t complain about it. She was just working hard on it all along. She’s just like the type of person that would do that,” senior Ada Zhang said.

Banks competed with 40 other finalists for the top prize, three of whom were from Stuyvesant. “It was a great experience,” Banks said.

The other three finalists from Stuyvesant were seniors Timothy Zuchi Chang, Olivia Hu, and Xiaoyun Yin. Each finalist received 5,000 dollars and a free laptop from Intel.

Banks was the only Stuyvesant finalist who submitted a mathematics project. Hu and Yin submitted biology projects and Chang submitted a microbiology project.

Banks did not take any elective math classes during her studies at Stuyvesant.

“[Winning] made college acceptance and [receiving] scholarship money easier,” Banks said. She will probably attend the University of Chicago this fall.

In her free time, Banks enjoys singing, writing and taking photos. She is also a member of the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Robotics team.

In the future, Banks said she hopes to “teach math in high school or college.”

Zhang said, “No matter what she does in her future, we know it’ll be awesome and really great.”