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Fairbanks, Alaska - With long pony-tailed hair, pierced body parts and Teva sandals, University of Alaska Fairbanks seniors Gregg Christopher, Orion Lawlor and Jason Tedor could pass for MTV musicians, not award-winning mathematicians. But don't let their appearance fool you. When it comes to math muscle, these guys are simply the best in the nation.

This Alaskan trio of brainiacs just won top honors in the 1999 Mathematical Contest in Modeling, one of the most grueling competitions in the country, and earned bragging rights over teams from powerhouse schools like Harvard and Yale.

Winning the competition is nothing new to Nanook mathematicians. UAF has ranked in the top two percent of all schools participating a record number of six times. "No other school in the universe can match this record," said Clif Lando, UAF mathematical sciences department head.

The MCM, held each February for college undergraduates, is designed to improve problem-solving and writing skills in a team setting. Students have 89 hours to come up with the solution to real-world problems involving natural sciences and mathematics. More than 400 universities from around the world compete.

This year's triumphant triumvirate have all competed on modeling teams in the past few years, so they knew what challenges they faced. Their coach, assistant math professor Chris Hartman, could empathize with the team's anticipation of the event- he was on the winning 1990 modeling team. Hartman, who got his bachelor's degree from UAF in 1991, went on to get a Ph.D. with a focus in graph theory from the University of Illinois. He now holds a joint appointment at UAF's Arctic Region Supercomputing Center and the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

At precisely midnight Thursday, the UAF team tore open an envelope containing this year's problems. Teams across the nation were synchronized to open their envelopes at the same time, with the same 89-hour deadline.

UAF decided to tackle the problem of how to demonstrate people evacuating from rooms during an emergency, based on how many occupants were in the room.

The trio modeled two scenarios for the problem. One was a mathematical tree using fractions to show how quickly people move through parts of a room. The second was a simulated room designed on a computer with people represented as red discs. The discs were programmed with many human foibles- they shoved and bounced off one another, navigated around furniture, and were indecisive about where to exit.

In 89 hours, the team researched everything from fire safety codes to psychological profiles of World Trade Center bombing escapees. They measured the dimensions of several campus facilities- Schaible Auditorium, the olympic-sized pool and gym at the Patty Center, the Wood Center Ballroom- to use as parameters for their models. Then, they created a computer program to crunch numbers and visually display the models. As the competition ran down to its last critical hours, the team wrote their paper explaining their techniques- a whopping 90-page mathematical modeling manifesto.

"After the competition last year, I was so tired I couldn't even lift a nacho chip to eat at the Pub," said team member Gregg Christopher, from Anchorage. "At least this year I was able to eat my nachos afterwards."

Teammate Orion Lawlor, from Glenallen, didn't worry about food. He slept for 21 consecutive hours after the competition. And Jason Tedor, the third member, slept on and off for two days after their winning paper was postmarked and in the mail.

"We've all been through this competition hell multiple times and ask ourselves, why do it again?" said Tedor, who hails from North Pole. "The answer is simple. We did it for the challenge."

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