65th Annual STS (2005-2006)
Finalists
Yi Sun

CALIFORNIA
Yi Sun, 17, of San Jose, submitted an Intel Science Talent Search project in mathematics that involves the winding number of a function, which, in the case of the plane, is the number of times it encircles the origin. The functions he considers are discrete random walks on the set of points in the plane with integer coordinates. A random walk here is a sequence of vertices such that with equal probability 1/4, a vertex in the sequence will be followed by the vertex directly above, below, to the left, or to the right of it. Yi asked how many steps one expects to take, in order to wind around the origin; he shows that this expected number of steps is infinite. A student at The Harker School, Yi reads French and Chinese fluently, captains the Quiz and Science Bowls, and enjoys swimming on the varsity team. Recipient of gold medals at international Olympiads in physics and math, he also received several awards in French and first place in the Mandelbrot Math Competition in 2005. The son of Dr. Lizhong Sun and Tianjing Shen, Yi was born in China. After completing mathematics studies at Harvard or MIT, he hopes to become a professor or research scientist.