Michael is a junior and the math team captain at Minnetonka High School. He attended MOP in 2025 and qualified for TST group. He enjoys math contests; his favorites are ARML and HMMT. He also attended CMIMC twice, SMT online twice, and BMT only once (thankfully). His favorite subject is number theory, and he is an avid synthetic geometry hater. He qualified for USNCO nationals and got a bronze in USAPhO. In middle school, he qualified for MATHCOUNTS and science bowl nationals. He got second place individually in the Minnesota mathleague in the 2024-2025 season.

Outside of math, he likes playing Minecraft and card games, and walking outside. He also enjoys earth science but he sucks at it. His favorite Greek letter is σ, his favorite function is the natural logarithm, his favorite constant is 3, and his favorite nonstandard ice cream flavor is asparagus.

Kaining Zhang is a senior at the Blake School and captain of her school’s math team. This is her third year helping out with Math and Science Club. She loves teaching younger students and building their passion for math.

Kaining is an UMTYMP graduate and a three-time AIME qualifier. She is also a Math Prize For Girls qualifier. She has been a member of the Minnesota All-State Math Team since 7th grade and has been competing on the top team for the past three years, attending national competitions like HMMT, CMIMC, and ARML.

Outside of math, Kaining enjoys figure skating, and she is a captain of the Blake Figure Skating Team. She plays viola with the GTCYS Symphony Orchestra, and qualified for MMEA All-State Orchestra twice. She also loves crocheting and solving sudoku variations.

Jessica Cao is a senior at Eden Prairie High School. She first began to really get into competitive math in seventh grade. Since then, she has achieved honor roll in AMC 8, qualified for MathCounts State, achieved distinction in AMC 10, qualified for AIME x2, qualified for Math Prize for Girls, and won many Young Women AMC Awards. She is also a math team captain at EPHS. She has been a part of the Minnesota All-State math team since 9th grade and has competed with the team in various competitions such as ARML, SMT, and CMIMC. She has also attended Stanford University Math Camp (SUMaC) Residential Program II, where she studied algebraic topology and conducted and presented guided research on p-adic geometry.

Outside of math, Jessica enjoys figure skating, drawing, painting, playing with her dog, and eating.

Evan Truong is a sophomore at Minnetonka High School. He first became interested in math and science competitions in 7th grade, when he joined the Minnetonka Middle School East Math & Science Club; founded by Michael Luo. Evan placed  2nd in the 2024 regional Mathcounts competition and 6th place at the 2024 Minnesota Mathcounts State Competition. Evan also represented Minnesota at the 2024 National ARML competition.

Evan is excited to share his love for math and science with others! In 7th grade, his team became the Minnesota Science Bowl state champion and placed 4th at the National Science Bowl competition. The next year, he took over as co-captain of the Minnetonka Middle School East Math & Science Club and helped lead his team to another state championship and top 8 finish at the National finals. In the same year, his team earned 1st place in Minnesota in Mathcounts with 3 of the top 6 Mathcounts contestants being from the Minnetonka Middle School East Math & Science Club.  

In his free time, Evan enjoys playing the best instrument (viola), debating, and sleeping, with a little bit of tennis and snowboarding to get his heart rate up.  He is honored to be a part of the Math and Science Club team.

Yan-Ru Cao is a high school sophomore with a passion for all things STEM, especially math and chemistry. He enjoys participating in various academic competitions, including math, science, linguistics, and quizbowl. His achievements include being on the AMC8 Distinguished Honor Roll, placing 5th individually and 1st as a team in State MathCounts; winning the State Science bowl Championship and placing 7th nationally, qualifying for the NACLO Invitational, and earning 4th place individually and 33rd as a team at the Quizbowl Nationals. Outside of academics, Yan-Ru loves studying and riding trains, reading comics, playing tennis, tending to his vegetable garden, cooking, and traveling.

Jacob Lee is a junior at Minnetonka High School. He is heavily involved in the math competitions community and has competed in math competitions such as the AMC Competition series, ARML, CMIMC, and SMT. He is also very interested in physics and has qualified for the USAPhO. Outside of math and physics he enjoys playing the viola, running, science bowl, volunteering, and skiing. 

Alex Ren is a sophomore at Minnetonka High School. He became interested in STEM activities when he first joined the Minnetonka Middle School east Math & Science Club. In 7th grade, his team, lead by Michael Luo, took 4th place at the National Science Bowl. The following year, he & Evan co-captained the team to a 7th place finish at Nationals. That same year, the school won the 1st place team award at MATHCOUNTS State.

Alex particularly enjoys earth science, physics, and mathematics. He loves clouds (it isn't as boring as you'd think), glaciers, volcanoes, kinematics, and separable differential equations (as opposed to linear differential equations). He's keen on spreading knowledge about these various topics (especially clouds), and is excited to give lectures on them (especially clouds).

Outside of STEM activities, Alex enjoys debating (Lincoln-Douglas format), hanging out with his friends, reading, eating, his dog, & playing video games. 

Eric Luo is an incoming freshman at Minnetonka High School. Like Evan, he first became interested in math and science competitions when he joined the Minnetonka Middle School East Math and Science Club. Eric enjoys math, mainly algebra and number theory. He has almost qualified for AIME (and is still upset about it), MATHCOUNTS State, received a 24 on the AMC 8, and made top 8 in Science Bowl Nationals. Outside of STEM, Eric enjoys playing Minecraft, chess, and playing tennis.

Sophie is a sophomore at Wayzata High School. Her favorite subject (and sci bowl main) is chemistry. She became interested in STEM competitions in sixth grade when she joined her middle school’s UIL team. 

Other than math and science, Sophie enjoys violin, speech, archery, and gaming.

Owen is a sophomore at Minnetonka High School that enjoys STEM. He is interested in math competitions having done Mathcounts, and being on the Minnetonka Math Team. Along with math, Owen likes to do science bowl maining earth and space science. Owen also enjoys computer science and coding,

Outside of STEM, Owen likes DECA, soccer, violin, hanging out with friends, reading, and playing video games.