Canadian Team Win Medals in 2019 IMO

The Canadian Math Team placed well at the The 60th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).  The six team members all won medals with more than 600 high school student competing all across the world.

One of our faculty members, Jacob Tsimerman, is the Chair of the IMO committee and is “incredibly proud of our team’s brilliant performance.” Tsimerman added: “The IMO is the apex of competitive mathematics at the high school level, and our students have represented our country incredibly well.”

The team results are as follows:

  • Victor Rong [Toronto], Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute, Toronto, ON – Gold medal
  • Howard Halim [Toronto], University of Toronto Schools, Toronto, ON – Silver medal
  • Thomas Guo [Markham], Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH, USA – Bronze medal
  • David Tang [Toronto], University of Toronto Schools, Toronto, ON – Bronze medal
  • Sebastian Jeon [New Jersey], Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, NJ, USA – Bronze medal
  • William Zhao [Richmond Hill], Richmond Hill High School, Richmond Hill, ON – Bronze medal

The full press release can be found here:

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!

U of T’s team of students place 4th in the 2017 Putnam Competition!

U of T’s team (hosted by our department) did well in the 2017 Putnam Competition coming in 4th place. The team consisted of three undergraduate students: Michael Chow, Itai Bar-Natan, and Dmitry Paramonov.

Michael Chow (4th year student) placed in the top 25. Itai Bar-Natan (4th year student) received honourable mention, placing in the top 100. Dmitry Paramonov (3rd year student) placed in the top 200.

The Putnam Competition is a mathematical competition open to undergraduate students across Canada and the United States. It is held annually since 1938 and is written in December. Teams consist of three members that represent the institution, although additional undergraduate students can participate. Over 4,500 students from 575 institutions participated this December with 47 students coming from U of T.

Several students from U of T also placed well including: Lexiao Lai (exchange student) making the top 200; Rafael Aznar (3rd year student), Adrian Carpenter (1st year student), Anthony Moshe Roitman (1st year student) making the top 500.

Since the fall, students have been training diligently under the guidance of two faculty members: Bernardo Galvao-Sousa and Alfonso Gracia-Saz. The Department of Mathematics extends congratulations to the team and thanks Bernardo and Alfonso and all participants for their efforts!

The link to our department’s webpage on Putnam can be found here.
More information of the Putnam Competition can be found here.
The announcement of 2017’s winners can be found here.

Canada AM Interview

Alex Song, perfect IMO scorer in this year’s competition, and Jacob Tsimerman, faculty member here in the department, were interviewed by Canada AM this morning on their success in this year’s International Mathematics Competition.

You can view the video here

Further details on this story can be found here

Canadian IMO Team Places 9th out of 104

Congratulations go to our Canadian IMO team which last week took 9th place in the contest out of 104 participating countries.  In addition, team member Alex Song received a perfect score on the contest (the only student to do so).

The team was lead by the Department’s own members Lindsey Shorser and Jacob Tsimerman.  

Participant Michael Pang attended the Canada Math Camp in 2012 which was hosted here in the Department and is sponsored by the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS).  The CMS also supports the Canadian IMO team each year.

We are very proud of this year’s team, congratulations to them all!

Further details can be found on the CMS press release.

 

Department Members Lead Canada’s IMO Team Training

Department members Jacob Tsimerman and Lindsey Shorser are spending the last two weeks of June in Banff training Canada’s IMO team for their competition in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from July 4 to 16, 2015.

The team is hard at work preparing for this year’s contest.  Canada has participated in the IMO since 1981. Last year, Math Team Canada placed 9th overall at the IMO in Cape Town, South Africa.

The 2015 Canadian Math Team with coaches Lindsey Shorser (far left) and Jacob Tsimerman (far right) with the 2015 Canadian IMO Team

The 2015 Canadian Math Team with coaches Lindsey Shorser (far left) and Jacob Tsimerman (far right)

The full media release about this year’s team can be found on the Canadian Mathematical Society’s website:
https://cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2015/2015MathTeamCanada

The CMS is responsible for the oversight and training of Canada’s Math Olympiad Team.

A video of the training, as featured on CTV Calgary, can be found here:
http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=644143&binId=1.1201914&playlistPageNum=1

(please note the caption for Lindsey Shorser incorrectly identifies her as Alexandra Whately and Professor Jacob Tsimerman is un-captioned – he is the last speaker in the clip)

Math Kangaroo Featured in CMS Notes

The CMS notes recently ran an article written by the board members of the Canadian Math Kangaroo competition detailing the potential competition like this have for popularizing the field of Mathematics for our up-and-coming mathematicians.

The article provides an overview of the competition, sample problems and background on the competition.  It also talks of how the competition helps to involve and inspire students to be involved with mathematics in a context outside the typical classroom.

The full article can be found here (starting on page 8 )

This year the GTA section of the competition saw over 900 students participate across the three UofT campuses (UTSC, UTM and St George) and had over 50 staff and students volunteer to make it a success.

More information on UofT’s involvement with the competition can be found here