<p>A computer-savvy high school senior has made his way from a classroom math project to the finals of a national science contest.</p><p>Seventeen-year-old Boris Alexeev, a student at Cedar Shoals High School who is joint-enrolled at the University of Georgia, did computer science research that could be useful in fields such as genetics and speech processing.</p><p>Alexeevs research deals with the theory of automata _ the mathematical basis for pattern matching and recognition.</p><p>I think it just has a certain aesthetic beauty to it that anyone who had discovered this would want to publicize it, would want other people to see it, said E. Rodney Canfield, a computer science professor at UGA. Its a problem that nobodys thought about for a long time _ and a really ingenious solution.</p><p>Alexeev, who has been taking all his classes at UGA for two years, was in one of Canfields classes when the question about a problem in the automata theory came up. Alexeevs research looks at testing division of numbers in numbering systems besides base 10.</p><p>I found out that not only did the teacher not know the answer to this question, but it had never been answered before, Alexeev said.</p><p>His work has been published in the Journal of Computing System Sciences and earned him a finalist slot in the Intel competition. The top winner will get a $100,000 scholarship.</p><p>The contest, which will be held in Washington in March, includes Nobel laureates among its past winners and has been called the junior Nobel Prize.</p><p>Research topics for some of the other contest participants include breast cancer, the effects of estrogen replacement therapy on white and gray brain matter and a new, secure method for multiple parties to communicate anonymously on the Internet.</p><p>For Alexeev, an interest in math and computer science runs in the family. His father, Valery, is a math professor at the University of Georgia and his mother, Natalia, is a math instructor there. The family moved to the United States from Moscow in 1990.</p><p>Alexeev is currently taking a course in computational number theory _ also known as cryptography. Next year, he plans to go to college at either Harvard University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</p><p>Im a math guy, Alexeev said with a grin. I enjoy math, so the way I got into this is just doing math. When you do something you enjoy, youre good at it, you get even better, and then you enjoy it more.</p><p>Information from: Athens Banner-Herald</p>
