8 July marked the 11th edition of the International Tournament for Young Mathematicians (ITYM). The Polish contestants, coached and supervised by the staff of JU Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Studies, took 3rd place out of 15 teams from all around the world.
The Polish team consisting of Krzysztof Boryczka (Bielsko Biała), Kamil Ciebiera (Rzeszów), Piotr Kaliciak (Rzeszów), Gabriel Kiciński (Gdynia), Piotr Ryłko (Kraków) and Radosław Żak (Kraków) outmatched most of their competition, earning a special distinction and an award for the best problem solving in a quiz. It is a notable achievement, considering it was the first time that Polish students participated in the event.
The team was formed out of the winners of this year’s Jagiellonian Mathematical Tournament and high school students participating in the Faculty’s tutoring programme. Since early April, they have been working on 10 open problems under the supervision of Sławomir Dinew, Michał Farnik and Grzegorz Kapustka from the JU Faculty of Mathematics as well as Eryk Lipka from the Pedagogical University of Cracow. In ITYM, teams are assessed based on the presentation of original solutions, which means that the participants are regularly publishing research papers as soon as they start studying at a university. The teams efforts during the competition were directly coordinated by Natalia Kupiec and Nikolay Sheshko.
