RSI

Since 1996, MIT has hosted a six-week summer program for high school students who are chosen for their superior achievement in math, science and engineering. Seventy-five high school juniors are selected by the Research Science Institute (RSI) based in Washington DC. RSI is part of the Center for Excellence in Education, a federally and privately funded nonprofit organization.

There are about 3000 applications to participate in this program, and out of the 75 selected about one third are from abroad and two thirds from the United States. A large fraction, between one and two dozen, of the 75 elect to work on research projects in mathematics. Each is matched by the MIT Mathematics Department Coordinator for RSI, Professor David Jerison, with a mathematics graduate student mentor with compatible interests. The graduate student mentor devises a research project, often in consultation with an MIT faculty advisor. The graduate student then meets with each of his/her charges daily during the RSI program.

At the end of the program, students make presentations to each other and to a panel of scientists who are usually former RSI participants themselves. Abstracts of recent mathematics projects and lists of participants are [here] (this link is coming soon).

RSI students often use their projects to participate in the Intel Science Talent Search and the Siemens-Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition. The mathematics group has been very well represented among the winners of these contests. In the 2007-2008 Intel Talent Search, ten of the semifinalists (top 300) were RSI mathematics students. Two of them, Benjamin Dozier and Qiaochu Yuan, have been named finalists (top 40) and are still in the running for further awards. Dmitry Vaintrob used his RSI mathematics project to win the grand prize ($100,000) in the 2006-2007 Siemens Competition.