Alumni, Michael Chow, wins Nathan Mendelsohn Prize

Congratulations to Michael Chow on winning the Nathan Mendelsohn prize for the highest ranking student at a Canadian university in the Putnam Mathematics Competition for 2017.

Chow has participated in the department’s Undergraduate Mathematics Competition, placing first 2016, 2017, and 2018.  He was also part of the Putnam team representing UofT which came in 4th place in 2017!

Chow graduated with High Distinction from the Honours Bachelor of Science program this June 2018.  We are proud of his achievements!

UofT Math Graduate Co-Winner of 2015 CMS Doctoral Prize

Yuval Filmus, who completed his PhD in 2013 for his thesis Spectral methods in extremal combinatorics at the University of Toronto, was recently awarded the 2015 CMS Doctoral Prize along with Hector H. Pasten Vasquez (Queen’s University).

This is the first time the award was given to two recipients which speaks to the quality of both their work.

Further information on the award, this year’s recipients and the CMS can be found here:
https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2015/dp-award

Congratulations to both Yuval and Hector on this prestigious award.

Math Outreach Featured in Alumni Stories

RickRossUofT alumnus Rick Ross was recently featured in an article profiling alumni and in it he discusses his involvement with our Summer Math Kangaroo camp and his other volunteer activities in math, engineering and business.

The full article can be found here

Past Graduate Student Wins International Award

Congratulations to a past graduate student from the department, Logan Hoehn (2011) who was the winner of the inaugural Mary Ellen Rudin Young Researcher Award Fund.

Further information on the prize can be found here

Canadian IMO Team Strikes Gold…

… and Silver and Bronze!

This year’s Canadian IMO (International Mathematics Olympiad) had a clean-up year for medals at this year’s competition.  The team, coached by Lindsey Shorser (an instructor with the Math Department), along with David Arthur, Ralph Furmaniak, and Alex Fink, won 6 medals (one for each of the team members).  In addition, the team leader was Jacob Tsimerman, who was a former U of T undergraduate math specialist.

In total the Canadian team walked away with 3 gold medals, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals.  This success ranks Canada 5th in the world out of 100 countries which is the best standing Canada has received since it started participating in the IMO in 1981.

The full story, complete with a picture of the team and a breakdown of the medals, can be found here

Further Stories

Our congratulations go to the team, its leaders and its coaches!  Great work!

Putnam Players Profiled

UofT Magazine recently sat down with a few of our past and current Putnam writers to profile the history of this competition and provide some “food for thought” for those interested in finding out about the types of questions asked.

The article can be found here

This year’s Putnam competition was written on Saturday, December 3rd by a group of 35 students.  The results of this competition will be announced sometime in April 2012.

Math and all that Jazz

Recently PhD candidate Alex Bloemendal sat down with the University of Toronto’s Bulletin to talk about how his love of music, his passion for math and an “enthralling conversation about probability” was what drew him into the Specialist Mathematics program here in the Department.

The Bulletin calls Alex “a virtuoso on the piano” who’s “favourite toy [growing up] was his mother’s Texas Instruments calculator” and talks about how there “is a common understanding among mathematicians that math is in fact the basis of sound.  Time, rhythm, meter, intervals and harmony all have a firm grounding in math.”

It then goes on to talk how, after some tough decisions, and a conversation with our own Professor Jeremy Quastel, Alex decided on doing his undergraduate degree right here at UofT.

The full article can be found on Page 8 here: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bulletin/PDF_issues/04-19-11_web.pdf