Teams of students from UCD, UCC and UG spent the weekend mulling over "real life" maths problems in a competition sponsored by the US National Security Agency.

Last year, the Mathematical Contest in Modelling attracted 400 teams from nine countries. Students in UCD, represented in the competition for the first time, have trained since November for this year's contest. Maria Meehan of the college's department of mathematics says the contest takes "a lot of hard work and a huge amount of commitment from staff and students". However, when she competed as a student she experienced a "tremendous" sense of achievement - despite the sleepless nights required to finish the project on time.

The competition officially started at one minute past midnight on Friday, and ended at 5 p.m. yesterday. The two problems this year asked students to develop a mathematical algorithm for a computer model of a medical cross-section (uh-huh) and for ideas on how to pinpoint the brightest students from a list of grades in a school where the A grade is awarded too liberally. While the teams could not discuss the problem with outsiders, they were permitted to use computers and libraries.

The competing students now await a reply from the Consortium for Mathematics and Applications to find out whether they will join the elite ranks of "Outstanding Meritorious Universities" and achieve the rare distinction of having a paper published in a professional maths journal before they even graduate.