Whiz Kids: Josh Lipschultz and Ben Marks

Names:  Josh Lipschultz and Ben Marks

Age: Both are 17

Grade: Juniors

School:  Niles North High School

Accomplishments: Niles North juniors Josh Lipschultz and Ben Marks earned second place honors in the Orals contest earlier this month. The competition was part of the State Math Team Competition held at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

“The Orals may be the most difficult contest in the Math Team competition because it contains material that is well outside the scope of high school mathematics and  often taught on the graduate level,” said math team head coach Ankur Joshi.

This year’s topic was Scheduling and Linear Programming, a mathematical technique for determining best outcomes.  At the state competition, teams were given just 10 minutes to analyze a problem and then seven minutes to present the solution.  Lipschultz was the team’s presenter and was assisted by Marks, as the two competed against 30 of the top academic schools in the state. The team scored 48/50 which was actually the same score earned by the first place finisher, Hinsdale Central.

Key to Awesomeness:  Head coach Joshi had this to day about Lipshultz and Marks: “Both Josh and Ben are very intelligent and gifted math students. They are both very good at quickly dissecting a problem and coming up with answers," coach Joshi said. "I was really impressed with how well they worked together and talked through the problems.

"Additionally, Josh has awesome presentation skills and can clearly explain solutions to problems and how they were reached, he added.

Lipschultz and Marks are both motivated by a strong interest in math, science and by the challenge of taking on complex subject problems. 

Lipschultz has also competed in numerous science fairs over the years. At this year’s Illinois Junior Academy of Science (IJAS) regional fair, his project involved creating a computer program for scheduling student classes at Niles North and received both the Yale Computer Science and Engineering award as well as the Intel Excellence in Computer Science award.  Lipshultz was pleased with the happy coincidence that this year’s math competition topic was somewhat similar to his science fair project.

Lipschultz credits much of his success to the superb faculty at Niles North as well as his  involvement in the RIOT (Researchers and Investigators of Tomorrow) club and STEM, which is the acronym for the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics program at Niles North.

“The instruction at Niles North in both math and science is excellent overall, both in class and in the clubs,”  Lipshultz  said.  The young math prodigy added, “hard work is the only way you can do really well at something. There's no substitute for that.”

Marks said that he's also been intrigued by mathematics from an early age.

“I have been into math since at least second grade. “I like figuring things out and I like competition,”  Marks said. 

At the IJAS regional fair, Marks tied for first in the Alegebra 2 category against 52 other competitors.  Marks was elated with the outcome at the state meet. 

“I was really happy working with Josh at the state competition and I was thrilled with the result, ” he said. Marks is also a member the track team,  as well as the Chess team which finished in second place at this year’s state tournament.  

Both Lipschultz and Marks are interested in pursuing studies in mathematics or science in college.  As juniors, though, the pair have their sites on next year’s math competition where they hope to finish on top.