U.S. Students Bring Home Medals at International Mathematics Competition in Brazil

Washington, D.C. - The six students on the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team took home gold and silver medals for their high scores at the international competition in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, held July 12-23, 2017. The U.S. team finished in 4th place out of 110 international teams.

The IMO brings together the top math students from more than 100 countries to compete each year. The U.S. team score was 148 out of a possible 252, just behind Korea, China, and Vietnam in order of team results.

One of the students on team USA, James Lin from Massachusetts, placed sixth out of more than 600 students who competed in the International Mathematical Olympiad. All six team USA members were in the top 103 scorers of the entire competition.

“We are very proud to be among the top five scoring teams again this year, highlighting our country’s consistent mathematical talent and problem-solving capabilities among our high school students,” said Michael Pearson, executive director of the MAA.

“This shows the strength of the MAA American Mathematics Competitions to build the problem-solving skills that students will use in the future to positively impact society. With the IMO team representing the top talent from the more than 300,000 students who participate in the MAA American Mathematics Competitions annually, we can look ahead to a growing population of problem solvers,” he said.

Students qualify for the U.S. IMO team by participating in a series of competitions provided by the Mathematical Association of America’s competitions program, called the MAA American Mathematics Competitions (AMC). More than 300,000 students participate in the MAA AMC program each year, which leads the nation in strengthening the mathematical capabilities of the next generation of problem-solvers. The six team members joined 75 of their peers from the United States and seven other countries at MAA’s Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program in June to immerse themselves in problem solving and train for the IMO and other international competitions like the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad, where the U.S. team also took first place in March.

The members of the 2017 U.S. team were: Ankan Bhattacharya, Zachary Chroman, Andrew Gu, Vincent Huang, James Lin, and Junyao Peng.

The team was accompanied by coach Po-Shen Loh, professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, and deputy coach Brian Lawrence, a graduate student at Stanford University.

IMO scores are based on the number of points scored by individual team members on six problems. On each day of the two-day competition, the teams have 4.5 hours to work on three problems. Bhattacharya and Peng were the returning team members from last year’s winning U.S. team.