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Faculty and students in the UBC Mathematics Department have recently received a number
of honours.
Academic awards and honours:
- Martin
Barlow has been award the 2009 CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize,
intended to be the premier mathematics prize in Canada.
Martin is a leading figure in probability and the leading
international expert in diffusion on fractals and other
disordered media. In addition, the impact of his work has
been important in such diverse fields as partial differential
equations, including major progress on the De Giorgi conjecture,
stochastic differential equations, the mathematical finance of
electricity pricing, filtration enlargement and branching measure
diffusions.
More information about the prize and Martin's work is detailed
in their CMS Email announcement.
- Martin
Barlow, Michael Doebeli
and Leah Keshet have been
appointed as Distinguished Scholars in Residence for
2009 at UBC's Peter Wall Institute for Advance Study. The
Distinguished Scholars in Residence program, targeted at
senior Associate and Full Professors, was developed to
bring to the Institute outstanding, UBC faculty members
with distinguished research records and commitment to
interdisciplinarity.
More information on the PWIAS Distinguished
Scholars in Residence program can be found at: http://www.pwias.ubc.ca/programs/sir.php
- Patrick Brosnan has
been awarded the 2009 Coxeter-James prize for research by the Canadian Mathematical
Society for his outstanding contributions to mathematical research. The full citation can be
found at
http://www.cms.math.ca/MediaReleases/2009/res-prizes
- Jimmy Feng,
Kalle Karu and Nike Vatsal
were all awarded NSERC Discovery Accelerator Awards. These highly competitive awards provide
substantial and timely resources to outstanding researchers who have a well-established research
program and who are at a key point in their careers at which they can make, or capitalize on,
a significant breakthrough.
http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Grants-Subs/DGAS-SGSA_eng.asp
- Eldad Haber, jointly appointed in Earth and Ocean Sciences and
Mathematics, has been awarded an NSERC Industrial Research Chair (IRC). The IRC program is
designed to enhance and develop research connections between universities and industry and to
provide enhanced training environments. More information about the IRC program can be found at:
http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/CFS-PCP/IRC-PCI_eng.asp
Teaching awards:
Student awards:
-
Graduate Award Winners for 2009-2010:
Vanier Scholarship: Cindy Blois
PIMS-IGTC Fellowships: Jun Allard, William Carlquist, Kelly Paton
NSERC Fellowships: Kael Dixon, Joanna Fawcett, Kyle Hambrook, Ali Fatehi Hassanabad,
Jennifer Morrison, Iain Moyles, Daniel Pareja, Kelly Paton
University Graduate Fellowships: Roland Bauerschmidt Yu-Ting Chen, Craig Cowan,
Alex Duncan, Mostafa Fazly, Hardeep Gill, Jay Heumann, Xiaohu Ji, Vishaal Kapoor, Aurel Meyer,
Andrew Morrison, Cihan Okay, Kai Rothauge, Ryan Schwartz, Dennis Timmers, Tereza Wei
MSc. Fellowships: Alexander Jakobsen, Athena Nguyen, Ali Vakil
- Farzin Barekat, an outstanding third year Honours Mathematics and Physics
student, has won designation as a Wesbrook Scholar and winner of HSBC Emerging Leader Scholarship (a Premier
Undergraduate Scholarship).
The Wesbrook Scholars and
Premier Undergraduate Scholarships are encouraging students who can balance high academic achievement with
outstanding contributions to society through a range of volunteer, cultural, and sporting activities.
Wesbrook Scholarships and Premier Undergraduate Scholarships Recipients List .
Academic awards and honours:
-
Ivar Ekeland has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada.
Election to the RSC recognizes the merits and achievements
of distinguished individuals from all branches of learning who
have achieved distinction, both nationally and internationally,
through research and scholarly work in the arts, humanities
and sciences. It is the highest academic accolade in Canada
that is available to scientists and scholars.
-
Stephanie Van
Willigenburg has been awarded a Humboldt Research
Fellowship for 2008 - 2009! The Humboldt Research
Fellowships are strongly competitive awards with which the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables highly-qualified
scientists and scholars from abroad to spend extended periods
of research in Germany. Steph will be spending part of 2009 at
the University
of Hannover.
Teaching awards:
- The Department Teaching Awards expanded
in 2008 to include both graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Two Graduate Student Teaching awards:
Adam Clay and Ryan Lukeman
Postdoctoral Teaching Award:
Ronnie Pavlov
Stephanie van Willigenburg has
won the 2008 UBC Faculty of Science Killam Teaching Prize.
This prize recognizes instructors who have shown "... the ability to motivate
students and stimulate critical thinking, sustained teaching excellence and
developent of innovative approaches to teaching methodology and curricula."
The recipient also receives a cash award.
For more details on this prize, please see
www.science.ubc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=24
Student awards:
-
The 2008 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition took
place on December 2008.
Cedric Lin was the UBC high scorer on the 2008 Putnam exam for the third
year in a row, this time placing in the top 15 in the entire competition
(out of a total of 3,627 participants). Other high scorers from UBC
included Farzin Barekat, whose top-50 ranking earned him an Honourable
Mention, and Stanley Xiao, who placed in the top 120 participants.
Overall, UBC had eight students place in the top 500.
UBC's team placed 19th among the 405 universities and colleges having
Putnam teams. We had 23 people participate in the exam; 19 of them
scored at or above the median, and 15 of them scored at least 10 points
(which is enough to place in the top third of all contestants).
Congratulations to all the students who participated, and thanks to the
department for their great support of the practice sessions!
-
Amir Moradifam won the prestigious Killam Predoctoral Fellowship
The following students won NSERC Fellowships:
Michael LeBlanc (Alexander Graham Bell CGS D),
Andrew Brown (PGS M),
Keira Gunn (PGS M),
Chan Ian (PGS M),
Tiffany Chao (PGS M),
Sitar Scott (PGS D),
Rose Simon (PGS D),
Cindy Blois (extended PGSM),
Shane Cernele (CGS M),
Tyler Helmuth (PGS M),
Jerome Lefebvre (PGS M),
Michael Lindstrom (PGS M),
Carol Ross (PGS M),
Vincent Sippola (PGS M),
William Thompson (PGS M)
The following students won University Graduate Fellowships:
Omer Dushek,
James Clarkson,
Adam Clay (UGF/Pacific Century Graduate Scholarship),
Vishaal Kapoor (partial UGF),
Erez Louidor,
Ryan Lukeman (UGF/Pacific Century Graduate Scholarship),
Aurel Meyer (partial UGF),
Andrew Morrison (UGF/ Josephine T. Berthier Fellowship),
Liang Zhu
In addition, Omer Dushek, Ryan Lukeman, and Jennifer Morrison won new IGTC awards.
-
The 2007 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition took place on
December 1, 2007. The top scorer at UBC was Cedric Lin, who achieved
an Honourable Mention, ranking in the top 75 participants overall.
Three other UBC students earned spots in the top 300 participants,
and a total of nine UBC students were ranked in the top 600.
The UBC Putnam Team ranked 15th out of 413 participating
institutional teams. A total of 3753 students from 516 colleges and
universities participated. A total of 25 students from UBC
participated, the highest participation rate in our history.
More information about the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical
Competition can be found here:
http://math.scu.edu/putnam/
Academic awards and honours:
Martin Barlow has
won the Canadian Mathematical Society 2008 Jeffery-Williams Prize
that recognizes mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions
to mathematical research.
For more details, please see the press
release from the CMS. More information about the prize itself
can be found at the CMS web site.
Jim Bryan and
Michael Doebeli both awarded a Killam Faculty Research Fellowship for next year.
The purpose of the award, based on special distinction of intellect, is to assist
promising faculty members, who wish to devote full time to research and study in their field
during a recognized study leave.
Jim has also been awarded a Visiting Research Professorship at the Miller Institute
for Basic Science at UC Berkeley. The purpose of this Professorship is to bring promising
or eminent scientists to the Berkeley campus on a short-term basis for collaborative research
interactions. More info at:
http://millerinstitute.berkeley.edu/page.php?nav=24
David Brydges has been elected as a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
RSC, founded in 1882, is Canada's oldest and most
prestigious scholarly organization, recognizing "the extraordinary accomplishments of
persons of talent, expertise and creativity in all fields."
Election to RSC is the highest honour that can be attained by scholars, artists and
scientists in Canada.
More information about the Royal Society of Canada can be found here:
RSC Home Page
Press Release of New Fellows
Citations
Joel Feldman
has been awarded the CRM-Fields-PIMS prize for 2007. This prize is
awared jointly by the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM)
of l'Université de Montré'al, the Fields Institute, and
the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences. An announcement
of this prize has been posted on the PIMS and CRM web sites:
2007 CRM-Fields-PIMS Award Announcement
English: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_an.shtml
French: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_fr.shtml
Joel Feldman has also been awarded the 2007 CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and
Mathematical Physics. More information about this prize can be found at
the Canadian Association of Physicists website:
English: http://www.cap.ca/awards/crm.html
French: http://www.cap.ca/awards/crm-f.html
Nassif Ghoussoub has
won the 2007 Jeffery-Williams Prize given by the Canadian Mathematical
Society.
Canadian Mathematical Society Press Release
Jeffery-Williams Prize Description
Nassif Ghoussoub and The Ha both won
Faculty of Science Achievement Awards for outstanding service and leadership.
Alexander Holroyd
has been awarded the 2007 André-Aisenstadt Prize. This
award is given by the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) of
l'Université de Montréal to a young talented Canadian researchers.
More information about this prize, as well as other prizes given out by CRM, can
be found here:
English: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_an.shtml
French: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_fr.shtml
Leah Keshet, Izabella Laba and Zinovy Reichstein have been awarded in the 2007 competition NSERC accelerator Supplements.
These highly competitive awards provide substantial and timely resources to outstanding
researchers who have a well-established research program and who are at a key point in their
careers at which they can make, or capitalize on, a significant breakthrough.
Izabella Laba has
won the Canadian Mathematical Society 2008 Krieger-Nelson Prize,
which recognizes outstanding research by a female.
For more details, please see the press
release from the CMS. More information about the prize itself
can be found at the CMS web site.
Don Ludwig was elected as a foreign honorary
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, announced in their press release.
Professor emeritus Donald Ludwig is one of two
Canadians inducted this year into the prestigious American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
One of 203 fellows and 24 foreign honorary members elected to the
academy in 2007, Ludwig joins a list of inductees that includes
former vice-president Al Gore, former U.S. Supreme Court associate
justice Sandra Day O'Connor, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and
filmmaker Spike Lee.
Ronald van Luijk is the winner of the 2007 G. de B. Robinson Award.
He will receive the award at the Society's 2007 Winter Meeting in London, Ontario.
For more details, please see
media release on Nov 9, 2007 from CMS.
- Yoichiro Mori, a Post-Doctoral Fellow, has won
the Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis at Oxford University. This award was
based on a paper he wrote on a convergence proof for the immersed boundary method.
More information about the prize can be found here:
Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis
Photos of this year's winners
Ed Perkins
has won the Canada Council Killam Research Fellowship. Ed is one
of only ten awardees this year in a competition that encompasses
humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences,
engineering and interdisciplinary studies within these fields.
These fellowships enable Canada's best scientists and scholars to
devote two years to full-time research.
The Canada Council for the Art's press release can be found here:
http://www.canadacouncil.ca/news/releases/2007/hq128166321106725706.htm
A busy year for Ed as he has also been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society
(London), as announced in their
press release. -
Dale Rolfsen will receive an honorary doctorate
(Docteur Honoris Causa) from the University of Caen, France. The award will take
place in Caen in November, where Dale will be giving a course of lectures
and finishing a new edition of his book "Why are braids orderable?"
Jozsef Solymosi
has won the 2008 CRM Andre-Aisenstadt Prize. The Andre-Aisenstadt
Prize is a major national award in mathematics that is awarded to
rising young Canadian stars. The selection committee was "...
struck by the extraordinary efficiency and elegance of his results
at the cutting edge of a new field, additive combinatorics."
The announcement of the awards can be found at
CRM Home Page
and a description of the CRM Andre-Aisenstadt Prize can be found on their web page
CRM Andre-Aisenstadt Prize page
Nike Vatsal has
won the Canadian Mathematical Society 2007 Coxeter-James Prize.
This prize recognizes young mathematicians have made outstanding
contributions to mathematical research.
For more details, please see the press
release from the CMS. More information about the prize itself
can be found at the CMS web site.
Teaching awards:
Joel Feldman has
won the 2007 UBC Faculty of Science Killam Teaching Prize. This prize recognizes
instructors who have shown "... the ability to motivate students and stimulate
critical thinking, sustained teaching excellence and development of innovative
approaches to teaching methodology and curricula." The recipient of the prize
also receives $5000.
For more details on this prize, please see
www.science.ubc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=24
Greg Martin has
won the 2007 UBC Faculty of Science Killam Teaching Prize. This prize recognizes
instructors who have shown "... the ability to motivate students and stimulate
critical thinking, sustained teaching excellence and development of innovative
approaches to teaching methodology and curricula." The recipient of the prize
also receives $5000.
For more details on this prize, please see
www.science.ubc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=24
Katya Yurasovskaya is one of
5 winners in the Faculty of Science of a UBC Graduate Teaching Assistant
Teaching Award. The award includes a prize of $1000, and was awarded for
Katya's work organizing problem-solving workshops for MATH 180 and 184 students.
Student awards:
-
James Bailey has won the Accelerate BC Award of Excellence in Life
Sciences for his internship project,"Determining the kinetics of self-assembly of islet
amyloid polypeptide in type 2 diabetes", conducted at BC Children's Hospital.
See
http://www.math.ubc.ca/~keshet/MITACS/index.htm for more information on the project.
The following students are winners of the 2007-08 University Graduate Fellowship:
- Sandra Kliem
- Ryan Lukeman
- Roger Mullen Woodford
- Samara Pillay
- Liang Zhu
The following students received NSERC awards. Their proposed research
titles are as follows:
- Karsten Chipeniuk (Graduate)
- Fourier Analytic Detection of Structures Contained in Sumsets of Primes and Continuous Analogues
- Tyler Dodds (Undergraduate)
- Approximations for Probability Densities of Pseudo-Periodic Bistable Climate Processes
- Alexander Duncan (Graduate)
- SAGBI Bases and Invariant Theory
- Hardeep Gill (Graduate)
- Superprocesses with dependent spatial motion
- Alexandra Jilkine (Graduate)
- Mathematical Modelling of Cytokinesis
- John Lang (Undergraduate)
- Mathematical Biology: Modelling the Spread of Disease
- Alan Lindsay (Graduate)
- Plate Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Capacitor Devices and blow up behavior of fourth order partial differential equations
- Andrew Staal (Graduate)
- Algebraic Geometry - Singularities, Jet Schemes, and Multiplier Ideals
- Justin Tzou (Undergraduate)
- A Numerical Optimization Algorithm
- Erick Wong (Graduate)
- Combinatorial properties of binary quadratic forms
The UBC Putnam Team was awarded
an honourable mention in the 2006 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical
Competition. They ranked 11th out of 402 participating institutional
teams. A total of 3640 students from 508 colleges and universities
participated.
The 3 members of the UBC Putnam Team consisted of Farzin Barekat,
Cedric Lin, and Samuel Wong. A total of 23 students from UBC
participated, the highest participation rate in our history.
The top scorer among the UBC Putnam Team was Cedric Lin,
who achieved an outstanding ranking in the top 25. Three other UBC
students earned spots in the best 300 participants overall, and a
total of seven UBC students were ranked in the top 520.
More information about the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
can be found here:
http://math.scu.edu/putnam/
A complete list of winners and outstanding achievers, and the prizes
they've won, are posted at
http://www.math.harvard.edu/putnam/2006_results/
Academic awards and honours:
Robert Miura has
won the 2006 Leroy P. Steele Prize with C.S. Gardner, J.M. Greene,
and M.D. Kruskal for the seminal paper Korteweg-de Vries equation
and generalization. VI. Methods for exact solution. Comm. Pure
Appl. Math. 27(1974), 97--133. The Steele Prize is a prestiguous
award given by the American Mathematical Society. More information
about this prize can be found at
MS Prize - Leroy P. Steele Prize web site
Jozsef Solymosi has won
a
2006 Sloan Research Fellowship which is awarded annually to approximately 20
outstanding young mathematicians who have received their doctorate degree from
a college or university in the US or Canada less than 6 years ago.
A list of recipients for this award (including one of ours from last year)
can be found here:
http://www.sloan.org/programs/fellowshiplist.shtml
Nike Vatsal has won
the 2006 Ribenhoim Prize awarded by the Canadian Number Theory Association.
This prize is awarded every 4 years to a young number theorist (as
defined as having received their doctorate less than 12 years ago)
who is Canadian or has connections with Canadian mathematics. For further
details, see
http://www.pims.math.ca/science/2006/06cnta/prize.html
Student awards:
Miguel Angel Moyers Gonzalez
has been awarded the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics
Society (CAIMS) Cecil Graham Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2006
for his doctoral thesis
Transient Effects in Oilfield Cementing Flows
The recipient of the award receives a trophy, a monetary prize and a one-year
membership in the Society, as well as being invited to present their thesis
at the Annual Meeting of the CAIMS.
More information about this prize award can be found on CAIMS's web page:
http://www.caims.ca/Awards/DDaward.html
Academic awards and honours:
Martin Barlow has been
elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (London). Fellows are elected
from citizens or residents of a Commonwealth nation, and who have made
"a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge,
including mathematics, engineering science and medical science."
More information about the Royal Society and the Fellowship can be found here:
Kai Behrend has been awarded a
2005 Killam Research
Fellowship. More information can be obtained in this
PDF document.
Michael Bennett
has won the
Ribenboim Prize of the Canadian Number Theory Association.
A busy year for Michael Bennett as he has also won the Killam
Faculty Research Fellowships. More information can be obtained in this PDF document. David Boyd has been awarded the
2005 CRM-Fields Prize. More infomation can be found at
Michael Doebeli has been awarded the
2005 UBC Charles A. McDowell Award for Excellence in Research. This award, consisting
of a medal, is given to an outstanding young member of the faculty of UBC who has
demonstrated excellence in pure or applied scientific research. More information,
including the criteria, eligibility and nomination guidelines can be found in this
PDF document:
Charles A. McDowell Award for Excellence in Research
Michael Doebeli has also been awarded the
2005 NSERC Steacie Fellowship, a prize given to outstanding Canadian university
scientists or engineers who have earned their doctorate within 12 years, and whose
research have an international reputation. The announcement and description of
the prize can be read on the NSERC web release:
Science and Engineering Achievers Honoured
Ben Green, a post-doctoral visitor from Trinity
College, Cambridge, has won the 2004
Clay Research Award for his work on arithmetic progressions of prime
numbers.
Joel Friedman has been awarded a
2005 Killam Research
Fellowship. More information can be obtained in this
PDF document.
Alexander Holroyd
is the co-winner with Itai Benjamini of the Weizmann Institute Rehovot
of the 2004 Rollo
Davidson Prize. This prize is awarded annually by Cambridge
University to an outstanding young probabilist. Alexander was cited
for novel contributions to different areas of probability including
percolation in its many forms.
Vlada Limic has been awarded
a Sloan Research Fellowship. More information about this fellowship can be
found at this site:
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: Sloan Research Fellowship
Gordon Slade has been awarded a
2005 Killam Research
Prize. More information about this prize can be found in this
PDF document.
Stephanie van Willigenburg
won an
Early Career Progress Award from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced
Studies.
Tai-Peng Tsai has been
awarded the Andre-Aisenstadt Prize. This award is given by the Centre
de Recherches Mathématique (CRM) at the Univeristy of Montreal
to a young talented Canadian researchers. More information about this
prize can be found here:
English: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_an.shtml
French: http://www.crm.umontreal.ca/prix/prix_fr.shtml
Vinayak (Nike) Vatsal has been accorded
the special honour of being invited to give a lecture at the 2006 International Congress of
Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain. The event's web page can be found here
2006 International Congress of Mathematicians (Madrid)
NSERC Strategic Grants and Research Chairs:
Alejandro Adem has been awarded a Tier I
Canada Research Chair. A profile of his research is here:
Research profile
Details about Canada Research Chairs can be found here:
Program Details
James Feng,
Ian Frigaard and Mark Martinez
(Chemical Engineering) have been awarded a NSERC strategic
grant to research smart spacers for extended reach horizontal
well cementing.
Richard Kenyonhas been awarded a Tier I
Canada Research Chair. A profile of his research is here:
Research profile
Details about Canada Research Chairs can be found here:
Program Details
Philip Loewen, Guy Dumont
(ECE), Michael Davies (ECE) have been awarded a NSERC strategic
grant to research autonomous cross-directional systems.
Honorary degrees:
Nassif Ghoussoub was
awarded a "Doctorat Honoris Causa" from the University of Paris, June,
2004. This is in recognition of Nassif's research accomplishments in
mathematics and for his many contributions to the discipline worldwide,
through his role in the founding of PIMS, MITACS and BIRS.
Teaching awards:
Student awards:
Kristen Shaw has won an
international competition for her USRA project from the Cryptologia
journal.
UBC Putnam Team placed 2 students in the top 75
contestants in the 2004 Putnam Competition, a challenging North
American mathematics competition for undergraduates. This achievement
awarded Daniel Brox and Dustin Tseng Honorable Mentions. A total
of 15 students from UBC entered this competion.
Keeping up a tradition of strong performance, UBC's team was
ranked 13th out of all institutions in North America. In all,
we had thirteen students place in the top 1200 in North America,
and nine in the top 600.
More information about the Putnam competition can be found here:
http://math.scu.edu/putnam/
James Carrell has won the Faculty of Science
Achievement Award for dedicated service to the Mathematics Department and the Canadian
mathematical community.
Adriana Dawes was a co-winner
of the joint CMS/CAIMS poster award. Details are posted on the webpage of the CMS/CAIMS Summer 2004
Meeting.
Mary-Margaret Daisley has won the Faculty of Science Achievement Award for
dedicated service to the faculty, staff and students of the UBC Mathematics Department.
Liam Watson was one of ten winner's of the U.B.C. Graduate
Teaching Assistant Award.
Izabella Laba is the winner
of the Canadian Mathematical Society's Coxeter-James
Prize for 2003. This award recognizes outstanding young
mathematicians who are either Canadian or work in Canada. The citation
refers to her work on the Kakeya conjecture on Hausdorff and Minkowski
dimension of Besicovitch sets with Nets Katz and Terence Tao, which
surmounts a natural barrier to improving earlier lower bounds by
Thomas Wolff and Jean Bourgain. Her current work with Michael
T. Lacey deals with questions in combinatorial number theory and
measure theory, constructing, with Michael T. Lacey, "large" sets
of integers without k-progression.
Gordon Slade is the co-winner
of the
Prix de L'Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) 2003 with Remco van der
Hofstad of the Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics, Delft University,
for the paper
Convergence of Critical Oriented Percolation to Super-Brownian Motion Above 4+1 Dimensions
Remco van der Hofstad and Gordon Slade
Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré (B) Probabilités et Statistiques,
Volume 39, Issue 3.
UBC Putnam Team placed in the top-10 among
participating universities and colleges in North America in the 2003
William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. More information is
found here.
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