The team will be led by former Math Team Canada member, Alex Song. Alex holds the record for having won 5 gold medals in a row at the International Olympiad and obtaining a perfect score at the 2015 IMO. He is currently a quantitative researcher at the American hedge fund, Citadel Asset Management. Byung Chun, another IMO medalist is this year’s deputy team leader for Math Team Canada. Byung competed for Canada at the International Mathematical Olympiad from 1995 to 1997, earning two bronze and one silver medals. In addition to being a high school teacher, he has been working on training students for math contests for 12 years at the CMS National, Winter and Summer Camps and in after-school programs.

Each student competes individually to solve six questions, in a competition lasting two days, four and a half hours each day. The six students were chosen by the Canadian Mathematical Society IMO Committee, based on the results of the Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge (November 2019), the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad (March 2020) and other national and international mathematics competitions.

The chair of the IMO Committee and former Math Team Canada leader James Rickards (McGill) says he is very pleased with the 2020 team:

These six students performed exceptionally well on the Olympiads this spring, including the first ever Canadian team selection test. I wish them the best of luck on the IMO!

This year, Eric Shen is chosen as the Beatty Student. His participation at the IMO is sponsored by the Samuel Beatty Fun and he will be writing the Samuel Beatty IMO Report following the competition.

The Canadian Mathematical Society wishes the team best of luck in the upcoming competition and training sessions that precede it.

About the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO)

The IMO is the world championship high school mathematics competition. The IMO began in 1959 in Romania with seven participating countries. Math Team Canada expects to compete against the world’s best students from over 100 countries in the 61st IMO. Canada has earned 33 gold, 57 silver, 92 bronze medals and 19 honorable mentions since first competing in 1981.

Canadian Math Team Sponsors

The Canadian Mathematical Society is very grateful to the following sponsors for their support of Math Team Canada 2020:
The Canadian Actuarial Foundation; the Society of Actuaries; The Casualty Actuarial Society; University of Waterloo; York University; NSERC PromoScience; the McLean Foundation; the S. M. Blair Foundation; the Samuel Beatty Fund; the Aqueduct Foundation; Centre de recherches mathématiques; the FIELDS Institute; the Government of Ontario as well as individual donations from members and non-members of CMS.

About the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS)

Founded in 1945, the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) promotes the advancement, discovery, learning and application of mathematics. The CMS promotes mathematics through a rich array of activities including scientific meetings, publications, awards, prizes, grants, camps and competitions.

For more information on Math Team Canada, please contact