April 2026 Newsletter
- nshell8
- Apr 21
- 6 min read
Welcome to the Math and AI 4 Girls April newsletter! Read on to find more competition updates, fascinating new research in math & AI, and other mathematical opportunities. As a reminder, our 2026 competition closes in 5 days, so please submit as soon as possible! We'd also greatly appreciate if you could take the time to fill out our feedback form linked here.
Contributors: Fiona Liu, Eva Lin, Angelina Wang, Chelsea Lu
Table of Contents
Competition Update
Problem of the Month
Women in Math Story
Math and AI Research
Promotional
POTM Hints
MA4G Competition Update
The clock is ticking! We’re now in the final week of the 2026 Math & AI for Girls Competition, and we’ve already been amazed by the innovative ideas and problem-solving skills in this year’s submissions.
As a reminder, the competition will close April 26th, so make sure you’re putting the finishing touches on your submission. There are cash prizes up to $1,000 and exclusive merch from our sponsors, including Jane Street and Wolfram Alpha. This is your moment to shine! Don’t miss the deadline!
Our Discord community continues to stay active. Be sure to check out our Question of the Day released by our communications team, along with our Problem of the Day and Problem of the Month released by our problem set team. These are great opportunities to stay engaged, challenge yourself, and stay inspired.
If you haven’t already, take some time to explore past newsletters in our Newsletter Archive on the website for more insights.
As we approach the deadline, keep the enthusiasm going! Be sure to spread the word about MA4G in your communities. Good luck, and happy problem-solving!
POTM
Welcome to MA4G’s April Problem of the Month! Every issue of the newsletter, we’ll feature a math challenge for you to try. This month’s problem is below:
Circle ω has center O and radius 4. A point A is drawn such that OA = 8. A line ℓ is drawn through A that intersects ω at two distinct points, B and C, with AB < AC. The circumcircle of △ABO intersects ω again at P, and BP and OA intersect at X such that BX = √6 and PX = 2√6. Compute the length of AP.
Problem Credits: Aashita Mandiwal
If you’re feeling stuck, we have hints to help you out. We highly recommend trying your best before checking the hints, and working with them one at a time.
POTM Hints
1. Recall that if two chords are the same length, their corresponding arcs have the same measure.
2. A quadrilateral in a circle is a cyclic quadrilateral, which has several useful properties you might be able to use.
Submit your solutions at the form here.
Everyone is encouraged to give the POTM a try, and we will be giving $50 at the end of the season to the eligible contestant with the highest cumulative POTM score!
Good luck and have fun!
Women in Math Story
Every month, we share a figure whose story reflects the mission of MA4G. This month, we share the journey of Joan Clarke, whose work as a codebreaker during WWII helped decrypt Nazi Germany’s secret communications.
Clarke grew up in London, and, in 1936, won a scholarship to study mathematics at Newnham College, Cambridge. She gained a double first degree in mathematics but only received it in 1948 when Cambridge University finally allowed women to graduate. While in college, her mathematical abilities were noticed by Gordon Welchman, who, after WWII began in 1939, recruited her to join him at the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) in Bletchley Park to break the German Enigma Code.
In June 1940, Clarke began working in Hut 8 and became the only female practitioner of Banburismus, a cryptanalytic process developed by Alan Turing (with whom she worked in Hut 8). When in 1941 Enigma key tables and a naval Enigma machine complete with rotors was captured, Clarke and colleagues were able to decipher the codes. Clarke also found methods to decode shorter messages where there were fewer clues. With Hut 8's expertise, the amount of shipping sunk by German U-boats monthly reduced drastically from 228,000 tons to 62,000 tons. She was appointed as deputy of Hut 8 in 1944 and later as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1946.
After the war, Clarke worked for Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), before moving to Oxfordshire to continue her research in coinage as a numismatist in 1986. She would later develop the complex coin series in Scotland under King James III and James IV. She won the Sanford Saltus Gold Medal from the British Numismatic Society in 1986 for her research.
At Clarke's time, female cryptologists were nearly unheard of, but Clarke’s immense mathematical passion and talent, which her colleagues highly praised, made her a crucial contributor to the Allied victory in WWII. Due to the secrecy of cryptanalysis and never seeking the spotlight herself, the extent of her impact remains unknown. Regardless, her story serves as inspiration for many young girls to break gender barriers in mathematics and strive for historical impact.
Math and AI Research
April was a big month in new AI model releases! We’ll discuss a few of the most notable frontier models and their implications. Click on any link to learn more!
Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview was one of the most discussed AI releases this month. In testing, Mythos was able to find and exploit previously unknown software weaknesses in major operating systems and web browsers, called zero-day vulnerabilities. A zero-day vulnerability is a security flaw that developers don’t know about yet, which makes it a high risk point for hacker attacks. Because Mythos is so powerful, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing, a controlled-access program that only grants access to a select number of software infrastructure companies including Amazon Web Services, Apple, Microsoft, and Google to strengthen key software before attackers gain access to comparable AI tools.
A week after Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview, OpenAI released its own cybersecurity model, GPT-5.4-Cyber. Unlike a normal public chatbot, GPT-5.4-Cyber is designed for people who are verified as legitimate cybersecurity workers. These new policies show a trend in AI, where the most powerful models are regulated through controlled access to prevent cyber capabilities from falling into the wrong hands.
OpenAI also released GPT-Rosalind, a model series built for life sciences research, including fields of biology, medicine, genetics, and drug discovery. The name “Rosalind” refers to Rosalind Franklin, whose work was crucial to our current understanding of DNA’s double helix structure. GPT-Rosalind can help with multi-step workflows including literature review, experimental planning, sequence interpretation, and data analysis, demonstrating significant improvement from previous models across benchmarks in chemistry, biochemistry, understanding of protein structure, phylogenetics, and more.
Finally, Google DeepMind released Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, a model designed for embodied reasoning. While most AI models today are good at working with information on a screen, few have the ability to interact with the real world. Embodied reasoning helps AI connect thinking with physical action, with the newest Gemini model improving on previous models’ ability to identify objects in an image and understand the relationship between multiple camera streams. Using zooming and pointing, Robotics-ER 1.6 can better perform real-world tasks such as reading the output on an analog gauge and identifying objects that satisfy certain physical constraints.
Promotional
Every month, we feature an organization that shares our mission of supporting girls in STEM. This month, we’re partnering with Non-Trivial, an online research program that supports high schoolers in pursuing impactful research with mentorship in the company of equally motivated peers. A message from Non-Trivial:
Non-Trivial (https://www.non-trivial.org/) runs selective online programs and provides grants and scholarships helping ambitious 14 to 19-year-old students build the research skills and experience they need to tackle humanity’s most pressing challenges. Our applications open next school year, but we're giving students in some of our strongest partner programs special access to register for our Referral Network (https://apply.non-trivial.org/referral-network), giving you an inside track for our next cycle. Our partner program Leaf Courses (https://leaf.courses/) is also running courses this summer that will train you for whatever research and competitions are in your future for next year! Apply at https://leaf-summer-2026.paperform.co/ by May 1.
Math and AI 4 Girls would not be possible without generous support from our current and past sponsors: Jane Street, DE Shaw & Co, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hudson River Trading, AI4All, Automation Anywhere, J.P. Morgan Chase, Non-Trivial, and Wolfram Alpha. Thank you so much to all our sponsors! If you’re interested in partnering with us, please reach out.