Joana Nikolova Wins Silver at European Math Olympiad

Did you know that the world of Math Olympiads is male-dominated? Neither did we.

To level the playing field, the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad was established in 2011 as a parallel tournament.

At this year's edition, held last week in Florence, Italy, ACS junior Joana Nikolova won a silver medal. She was part of the Bulgarian National Team of four girls.

Joana's success was the culmination of a long process of excellence which started last year with the Fall Math Competition and continued with this year's Spring Math Competition where the top girls mathematicians emerged. Then followed a selection for the national team and a one-week crash course at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. After that, on to Florence.

With 36 European countries and 16 guest countries attending, the competition was staggering. 195 participants from 52 countries was a new record for EGMO.

Three complex problems had to be resolved over each of the two days of the competition. Then the teams' leaders went behind closed doors with the judges to coordinate the scores. As the day progressed, our girls were supposed to be sight-seeing around Florence, but were actually busy online following the scores and ranking coming out of those coordination sessions.

Joana Nikolova and Lyuba Konova won silver medals and the Bulgarian National Team took 14th place. Congratulations, girls!