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Hearing Reynolds ask this, Li Ao, though unsure why the professor was suddenly interested in his vacation plans, thought for a moment and truthfully stated his intentions: "I'll probably stay in Chicago. I want to use this time to re-derive the boundary terms of the singular integral and see if they can be perfectly integrated into the existing energy estimates."

This is indeed his true thought.

The Christmas holiday is quite long, and it would be a waste not to take advantage of this rare opportunity for quiet study.

Besides, his grandmother still lives in the South District, and he can't let go of her, so he has no interest in traveling around.

In addition, the topic of weak boundary solutions has been established for about a month now. Now that he has a clear idea, he wants to sort out all the key estimation chains in one go, so as to take this as a phase result of the independent reading course and formally move towards writing a paper.

Reynolds was clearly very satisfied with the answer, and smiled as he nodded, continuing the conversation: "Since you're staying in Chicago for the holidays, you can do me a favor."

"Professor Reynolds, please speak freely," Li Ao straightened up and answered crisply.

In recent days, he has learned a lot of unique mathematical analysis techniques from Reynolds, including classic tools in the intersection of harmonic analysis and partial differential equations.

This played a crucial role in his combination of singular integrals to optimize boundary energy estimation, greatly shortening the theoretical derivation cycle.

Now that the professor has offered his help, as long as it's within his capabilities, he naturally has no reason to refuse.

"Don't worry, it's not urgent and won't delay your project progress."

Seeing that he readily agreed, Reynolds didn't keep him in suspense and explained the situation directly, "It's like this, next year's American Mathematical Modeling Contest, the Mathematics Department is preparing to cooperate with the school's Physical Sciences Department..."

The school will select several professors to serve as training coaches. Around the winter break, the school will offer a short intensive training course specifically for modeling competitions.

"I'd like you to be my temporary teaching assistant and help me teach classes."

Li Ao was somewhat surprised after hearing Reynolds' words.

He knew, of course, that every year when the University of Chicago participated in the American Mathematical Modeling Contest for College Students hosted by COMAP, the school would select several heavyweight professors from the mathematics and physics departments to organize intensive training for the students in order to ensure that they could achieve good results.

But he really didn't expect that Professor Reynolds would choose him, an undergraduate student who hadn't even officially enrolled yet, to be a temporary teaching assistant, and even to give lectures to the competition group.

Thinking of this, Li Ao felt something was amiss and quickly voiced his concerns: "Professor Reynolds, strictly speaking, I am still only a high school student, and I have never participated in a mathematical modeling competition."

"Is it a bit inappropriate for Sai to go straight to giving a lecture?"

After all, students who dare to sign up for MCM usually have some basic ability to solve practical problems with mathematics, and may even be top students in their senior year.

Having never even participated in a school's mock competition and lacking formal university student status, it's understandable that people might resent my decision to become a teaching assistant.

However, Reynolds waved his hand dismissively: "In my opinion, no one is more suitable than you."

"As you know, I haven't been supervising many graduate students these past few years. I finally found someone I liked, but you went to Jason's. Now that I'm having you come and help me as a teaching assistant for a while, it's a way of fulfilling my wish."

"Besides, with your mathematical foundation and coding experience, those modeling problems are no challenge for you at all, and you are naturally good at writing academic papers."

"Most importantly, I know you've done project reports for the Department of Energy before, and you've also taught classes. You're very good at explaining complex issues clearly."

Having said all that, Li Ao knew that refusing any further would seem pretentious, so he could only nod in agreement.

66

Okay, I'll give it a try.

"I feel much more at ease knowing that you said that. I hope our school's team can achieve outstanding results next year."

Reynolds breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Li Ao agree, his tone carrying a hint of expectation, "In the past few years, our University of Chicago has not been able to obtain the highest level of Outstanding Winner award."

In fact, as one of the top mathematical centers in the United States, the Department of Mathematics at the University of Chicago has traditionally focused its main efforts on tackling various pure mathematical problems and publishing top academic papers, and has never been particularly enthusiastic about undergraduate competitions that are more focused on practical applications.

Even so, it's somewhat embarrassing for a prestigious school to miss out on the Outstanding Achievement Award for several consecutive years.

After all, the American Mathematical Modeling Contest has been held for so many years and is a well-known top competition in the United States and even internationally.

In recent years, the influence of the National Undergraduate Modeling Contest has continued to expand, with many top students from overseas universities forming teams to participate.

Since Reynolds was assigned to be in charge of this matter by the department, he was naturally eager to see his team perform well.

He had barely finished speaking when he seemed to remember something, and casually muttered to Li Ao, "If I weren't worried about delaying your current research progress, I would have let you lead the team to the competition. With you in charge, we definitely have a good chance of winning the Outstanding Award next year."

At this point, Reynolds smiled and added, "And I heard that Professor László Babai is among next year's on-campus training advisors. I reckon that old gentleman has heard of you."

Upon hearing the name "László Babai," Li Ao's heart lit up slightly.

He was well aware of the old man's influence in academia.

As a leading figure in discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science at the University of Chicago, Professor Babai is renowned for his expertise in group theory algorithms, graph isomorphism, and computational complexity. His name frequently appears in top-tier papers, and he has taught in the mathematics and computer science departments at the University of Chicago for many years.

Since Professor Babby is serving as an advisor to the university this time, and Professor Reynolds, whom I know well, is in charge of the training course, I should not only join in the fun of next year's American Mathematical Modeling Competition, but also make some preparations in advance.

Since he was going to teach the classes anyway as a temporary teaching assistant, it wouldn't conflict to familiarize himself with the competition format in advance. Besides, he had promised Isabella that they could team up if the opportunity arose.

Having figured this out, Li Ao didn't hesitate and raised his head to frankly state, "Um—Professor Reynolds, I'd also like to sign up for next year's modeling competition. Don't worry, I promise I won't delay the progress of my research project."