Sandra M. Valdez/Los Alamos National Laboratory

Teammates (from left) Brian Lott, Kristin Cordwell and Erika DeBenedictis react after winning the top award in the 17th New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Their project, which evaluated how to use gravitational pull from planets and other solar bodies to assist space flights, was picked Tuesday as the best of 67 submissions.

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LOS ALAMOS — Three very smart kids, three very smart dads.

None of the kids knew each other last summer - nor did the dads, but there is a common thread among each group.

The kids - Brian Lott, Kristin Cordwell and Erika DeBenedictis - just won the 17th annual Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge.

The dads - Steve Lott, William Cordwell and Erik DeBenedictis - all work at Sandia National Laboratories.

And all of them love math, science and computing with a passion.

The web of relationships sounds almost like one of the complex math equations used in the kids' project, titled "Optimizing Trajectories," which calculates the quickest, most inexpensive pathways to launch probes into space.

Yet another Sandia scientist, David Womble, works with DeBenedictis, who designs supercomputers.

Womble also knows Brian Lott, a 17-year-old senior home-school student who is working on an internship at Sandia.

He put Brian and Erika together so they could talk about a possible supercomputing project.

"We met for about a half-hour in David Womble's office and then we talked by e-mail," Brian said. "We stayed in touch."

Erika, a 15-year-old St. Pius X freshman, met Kristin, a 16-year-old Manzano High sophomore, last summer at a Saturday math class taught by Kristin's dad, who works on information security at the labs.

Kristin won last year's Supercomputing Challenge with teammate Chen Zhao for "Finding Inverses in a Finite Field," a math-heavy endeavor in its own right.

This year, Kristin wasn't even sure she wanted to do the challenge, but Erika talked her into it - and soon the three were gathered around the DeBenedictis family dining table.

"We had a planning session in my house and they went through half a dozen options," the elder DeBenedictis said. "It finally came down to video compression or orbits, and orbits won out."

Then, DeBenedictis and Cordwell signed on to be the team's advisers, with a little extra help from Lott, an electromechanical engineer.

And while the three dads didn't know each other before the project, they had heard of each other, admired each other and have become friendly over the past year, they said.

Cordwell's Saturday advanced math class is especially well-known, they said.

"You can argue about which Albuquerque high school is going to win," DeBenedictis said of the challenge. "But the odds are good they all attended William's math class on Saturday mornings."

Cordwell has always loved math, and encouraged his children to love math as well.

When Kristin was little, he'd make her count M&Ms on the kitchen table. If she counted them correctly, she could eat them.

But that wasn't his only trick, Kristin said.

"When I was 3 years old I memorized the periodic table of elements, and then we got to go to McDonald's," Kristin said. "I got to go to the play place and it was really exciting because we never got to go."

She still knows most of the table, she added, rattling off a long list of elements.

Erika, ever competitive, seems driven to a friendly rivalry with Kristin.

"I know more digits of pi than her," Erika said, listening to Kristin's list. "I know 120 digits or so."

Erika also memorized the words in the book "Dracula," which her father read to her when she was about 4 years old.

"I memorized it, and then he'd switch a word, and I'd get really mad," Erika said.

For Brian, childhood was a little less mathematical and grammatical. He was all about science, he said.

"I was the only 4-year-old that knew how water got to the faucet," Brian said. "I could say 20 steps to build a house. I had the most awesome Lego set."

He paused and grinned sheepishly.

"I still do," he said.

Put all that brain power - three Sandia scientists, three very smart kids - together and you're bound to get a highly complex project, and some very impressed judges.

"They learned the physics from scratch," said Sanjib Gupta, one of the contest's judges. "Their project is very much like advanced undergraduate college work."

But despite their common links, the kids said their different educational backgrounds - one home schooler, two from different high schools - was actually one of their strengths.

"We didn't have all that much interaction with the schools and I think the diversity helped us," Erika said.

Brian heads off to Baylor University this fall to major in computer science, with his $1,000 in winnings and a $1,500 challenge scholarship in his pocket.

The girls haven't decided if they'll do the challenge next year, they said.

But they will all likely remain friends, and remain in contact, the three said.

All three said they also hope their parents remain friends.

"It's nice they know each other and get along," Erika said.