QUEST Students Take First Place in Case Competition

Four students from the University of Maryland’s QUEST Honors Program traveled to the University of Pittsburgh for the FreeMarkets Race to the Case Supply Chain Management Case Competition, where members of Cohort 42 took first place.

Undergraduate students Marvi Shroff ’26, finance and information systems; Meilin Yuan ’26, finance and information systems; David Oloye ’26, civil engineering; and Yesha Shukla ’26, mechanical engineering, beat out 11 other teams from 10 different universities. They completed a three-round case competition while physically racing to buildings around campus.

The case involved looking at how to best optimize supply chain practices for a manufacturing company to cut costs while still innovating and maintaining part production. The case competition was unique in that students had to physically run to buildings on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, including a half-mile uphill run to get the case, then go to another building for case submission, and then a third building to submit the second-round case. Timing was important as points were deducted for the last 5 teams to make it to each location for case submission.

“I had never competed in an environment with such strict time requirements, and where success was directly linked to time efficiency. Even with these time constraints, my team and I still valued the quality of our work over everything else. We refused to turn in our work until we felt confident in our results and took the time when we could to double-check our work,” said Yuan.

“The reason we decided to compete in the Race to the Case competition at the University of Pittsburgh was its focus on both business and engineering,” said Shroff. “QUEST has always emphasized cross-functional collaboration between Smith, Clark, and CMNS, and I was excited to see how I could put that well-rounded education to work in a challenge that combined both sides.”

As the students are all part of the QUEST program, they already had experience working together and understood each other’s strengths, Yuan added.

“That familiarity and trust were vital throughout the competition and allowed us to focus on problem-solving instead of figuring out how to work together,” said Shroff.

Yuan and Shroff had also previously won the Milgard Invitational Case Competition on Social Responsibility during the spring 2025 semester. Yuan said they wanted to work together again on the Race to the Case competition, as their QUEST coursework will be complete this semester.

“It felt so rewarding to know that the quality of our work paid off in the end,” Yuan said. “It was also satisfying for us to have been able to use the skills that we had learned through our QUEST coursework to represent the program and the University of Maryland at such a large-scale event.”

“I am so grateful to have represented UMD, Smith, Clark, and QUEST alongside my teammates,” added Shroff. “It truly felt like a full-circle moment that reminded me how far we’ve come together.”