RWTH Aachen University: RWTH school laboratory receives an award

The 400 or so school laboratories in Germany make a significant contribution to providing young people with an education outside of school and preparing them for an increasingly globalized world. The variety of offers reflects the creativity of the laboratory operators. The LeLa Prize, endowed with up to 5,000 euros, recognizes this wealth of ideas and represents a special recognition of innovative developments in school laboratories. It is awarded by the LernortLabor, the federal association of school laboratories, in the categories experiment of the year, digital school laboratory, and STEM education for teachers and student project of the year awarded.

In the “STEM education of teachers” category, particularly motivating concepts to support the training and further education of STEM teachers are honored. Here, the student laboratory CAMMP – short for computer-aided mathematical modeling program – of RWTH Aachen with its offers took first place in 2020. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research sponsors the LeLa Prize.

CAMMP is organized by the Graduate Schools AICES, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Mathematics. In various event formats, schoolchildren work with the support of researchers to solve challenging real problems from everyday life, industry or research. They use mathematical methods and computer simulations for this. Applications at CAMMP encompass issues from the fields of finance, aerospace, video game design, medical imaging and ecology. The problems examined all stem from the everyday life of young people. For example, they deal with the mathematics behind the recommendation algorithms of streaming services, understand how the Google search algorithm works or optimize the boarding process for airlines.