64th Annual STS (2004-2005)
Finalists
Po-Ling Loh

WISCONSIN
Po-Ling Loh, 18, of Madison worked in finite group theory for her Intel Science Talent Search project in mathematics. The group H is said to be a closed subgroup of a finite group G provided any homomorphism of H into G extends uniquely to all of G. Po-Ling studies the group D_2p of symmetries of a regular polygon with p sides, where p is an odd prime number. She shows if D_2p is closed and properly contained inside a finite group G, then G must be rather complicated. In particular she proves that G cannot be solvable. She further conjectures that for any p > 3 there exist such G whose commutator subgroup is nonabelian finite simple. Ranked first in her class of 523 students at James Madison Memorial High School, Po-Ling has perfect SAT scores. She has been a gold prize winner in the USA Math Talent Search for three consecutive years, has won awards in music and forensics and is copy editor of the school newspaper. She hopes to pursue a career in teaching after receiving her degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago. The daughter of Dr. Wei-Yin Loh and Theresa Loh, she enjoys singing, cross-stitching and playing frisbee.