The second and final round of the 2025-2026 UNM-PNM Statewide High School Mathematics Contest was held in the SMLC building at UNM on Saturday, February 14th, 2026. Over 110 students from 27 schools in Albuquerque, Los Alamos, Las Cruces, Lordsburg, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, and Zuni gathered at 1pm in the SMLC auditorium, where they were challenged with 8 puzzling problems ranging from games, probability, paradoxical areas, number theory/counting, logic, thick octagons, nonlinear equations, and bit representation. Graduate students and faculty volunteered to proctor and distribute t-shirts; thank you, it takes a village!

That morning students --with parents, siblings, teachers, and community-- attended a public lecture: "What Do Ecosystems Look Like? Geometry in Evolution and Ecology" by Mathematics Professor Elizabeth Gross from University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.  Many questions were raised by the audience after this engaging lecture. Thank you Professor Gross!

The contest organizers have carefully graded each student's solutions, and the winners will be announced in the last week of March. An awards ceremony and banquet will be held on Saturday, April 18th, 2026, in the Student Union Building at UNM. The ceremony will honor winners in each grade 5-12, as well as overall winners, and the top-scorer for each school. This gathering is always inspiring. Books, monetary prizes, and gift cards are given to students and their teachers, thanks to generous support from PNM, the Public Service Company of New Mexico.

This year's Contest is the 58th, with nearly uninterrupted organization by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UNM since 1965.

See also UNM News March 25, 2027.