Hriday “Day” Thakkar, a senior at Minot State University, recently received the Outstanding Presentation Award at the Mathematical Association of America’s MathFest 2015, according to a press release from Minot State. Annually, MAA awards 10 to 15 students an Outstanding Presentation Award. In the MAA student paper sessions, Thakkar presented “On the Numerical Solution of Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model.”

In these student paper sessions, students give 15-minute presentations on their research to an audience of mathematicians and other conference attendees, some of whom are judges and provide the students with a score and feedback.

Thakkar, a mathematics major, performed undergraduate research with Narayan Thapa, former MSU faculty member. The Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model, one of the definitive topics of investigation in mathematical finance and has been applied widely by investors for the purpose of “hedging,” a trading strategy used to minimize financial risk.