Students

Canadian IMO Team Strikes Gold…

July 26, 2012 By

… 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!

Filed Under: Alumni, Awards, Competitions, Faculty, In-the-News, Students

Azrieli Fellowship Prize

July 16, 2012 By

Congratulations go to Pinaki Mondal, a postdoctoral fellow with the Department, for being award one of this year’s Azrieli Fellowship Prizes.

From their website: The Azrieli Foundation is a Canadian philanthropic organization that supports a wide range of initiatives and programs in the fields of education, architecture and design, Jewish community, Holocaust commemoration and education, scientific and medical research, and the arts.

From their poster: The Azrieli Fellows Program welcomes the best and brightest postdoctoral scholars who wish to undertake postdoctoral research in Israel in any field of study. … The fellowships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence. Candidates are assessed on their potential to make cutting-edge contributions to their respective fields.

The full poster can be found here

Our congratulations go to Pinaki who joins other talented students for their prestigious prize.

Filed Under: Awards, Students

2012 UG Math Competition

April 12, 2012 By

The Department would like to congratulate all who took part in the 2012 Undergraduate Mathematics Competition. Overall there were 38 candidates who participated in this year’s event. Of those 3 were from the Scarborough campus and 1 was from Mississauga.

The top five students, ranked in order are:

Jonathan Zung, II Mathematics/Computer Science
Yu Wu, Engineering Science
Keith Ng, IV Physics
Jialin Song, I Mathematics/Computer Science
Jonathan Love, I Mathematics

The next ranking students are listed in two categories, each in alphabetical order.

Category II:

Rong Xi Guo
Mengdi Hua
Xuan Ju
Yiyang Lin
Mengye RenSusanna Rumsey
Pei Jun Zhao

Category III:

Anne Dranovski
Shuo Gu
Man Li
Samer Seraj
Matthew Sourisseau
Ian Weaver
Elise Yi Qian Yuan

The problems and solutions are posted on Professor Barbeau’s website and can be found here!

Our thanks go out to Nick Chenand and John Inciura for invigilating, Ilia Binder and Felix Recio who assisted in the marking and Edward Barbeau for organizing the event.

Filed Under: Competitions, Faculty, Students

Putnam 2011

March 29, 2012 By

We are pleased to announce the Putnam results for 2011.

Our warmest congratulations go to Jialin Song, who received an honorable mention and ranked 55 in North America, and among the top two contestants in Canada.

The University of Toronto team consisting of Alexander Remorov, Jonathan Zung, and Keith Ng ranked eleventh. All of the team members were ranked among 120-180 best in North America.

The top five teams in order were Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon, Caltech, Stanford and MIT. Harvey Mudd College, University of British Columbia, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, and Williams College placed among the top ten.

All told, 4440 students from 572 institutions competed.

Full results and the announcement can be found here

Filed Under: Awards, Competitions, Students

Putnam Players Profiled

December 5, 2011 By

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.

Filed Under: Alumni, Competitions, In-the-News, Students

Math Students Hit One Out of the Park

October 25, 2011 By

$OUA Championship Trophy with Ryan and Tyler$ Tyler Wilson (left) and Ryan Donnelly (right) hold the OUA Championship Trophy after Sunday's game The Blues baseball team has now been twice honoured in the U of T Bulletin.

The first was a profile of the department’s own graduate student Ryan Donnelly and profiled his skills as a pitcher in a “game shortened, no-hitter” against the Gaels from Queen’s University.*

The second featured both Mr. Donnelly and another of our graduate students Mr. Tyler Wilson as it celebrated the Blues “8-4 victory over the Western Mustangs” to cinche the OUA Championship.**

According to Mr. Donnelly, there seems to be something about the sport of baseball that attracts mathematicians; perhaps it’s the meticulously repetitive nature of the pitching.

Whatever it may be we congratulate Ryan and Tyler and the entire Blues team for their great victory! Batter up!

*More on Ryan’s story can be read here
**More on the OUA Championship featuring Tyler can be read here (includes a short video of the game)

Filed Under: Events, In-the-News, Students

Mathletes Do It Again!

May 28, 2011 By

Good News Everyone! The Mathletes VI have done it again, this year placing 1st in the Goodlife Toronto Team Marathon.

You can read all the results here

The winning runners were captained by Elio Mazzeo, and included Alex Bloemendal, Nataliya Laptyeva, Robert McCann, Matt Rideout, Didier Smets, and Mitsuru Wilson. They reached the podium at a time of 3:2:34.6, five minutes less than last year’s run when the team came in second.

On the same day, our graduate student Henning Petzka finished third in the half marathanon at a time of 1:14:48.0.

Thanks to the members of the department who contributed money to help towards the cost of running.

A further article on the event can be found here

Congratulations, Mathletes and Henning, we’re very proud of you all!

Filed Under: Faculty, In-the-News, Students