Nikita Reymer is a member of the Mathematical Finance group. Nikita was born in Russia, but also lived in Ukraine. He came to Canada when he was in grade seven. Recently he obtained a specialist honours bachelors degree in actuarial science from the University of Toronto and is planning to go to graduate school.

Mariya Interviews Nikita

Upon arrival to Toronto Nikita was amazed by the diversity of cultures that co-exist in the city. The impression was so strong that he still speaks of it with visible excitement. Nikita also noticed that school textbooks in Russia and Ukraine were very different from Canadian textbooks. “There are no games in Russian textbooks”, said Nikita. In Canadian textbooks there are more illustrations, examples, and applications. In contrast, Russian textbooks present information in a laconic way with fewer illustrations, but with more rigor.

When asked to describe his current project, Nikita exclaimed: “This is the best project I ever participated in!” Students were given an opportunity to explore real data to predict financial crises. Supervisors meet with the students twice a week. They use a hands-on approach to the material, which gives students the freedom to explore topics that interest them. Work was divided equally among team members. Each student presented their assigned articles.

Prior to the MITACS program Nikita held an NSERC USRA in the summer of 2009. He worked on Group Representation Theory with Professor Repka.

Nikita thinks that collaboration is essential for mathematicians. More people can solve a problem faster. There is a saying that a lot of Russian people use: “having one head is good, but having two is much better”, meaning that it is more effective to involve several people in problem solving.

Interview conducted by Mariya Boyko

Fernando Lenarduzzi, Lucas Bentivenha, and Rafael Rocha are visiting from Brazil. All of them come from the Universidade Estadual Paulista “Julio de Mesquita Filho”.

(L to R) Lucas, Rafael, and Fernando on Spiral Staircase

Along with other student researchers, Fernando works with the Symmetries of Euclidean Tessellations and Their Covers group supervised by Isabel Hubard, Mark Mixer, Daniel Pellicer, and Asia Ivic Weiss.

Lucas and Rafael are members of the Mathematical Finance group supervised by Matheus Grasselli and Oleksandr Romanko.

Upon arrival to Toronto they were impressed by the politeness of the local drivers and the absence of traffic. Fernando said that “compared to Rio, Toronto does not have traffic problems at all.” Rafael was surprised to see that such a heavily urbanized city as Toronto is full of trees and parks. Lucas pointed out that Rio and Sao Paolo are very similar to Toronto

Fernando’s description of the Brazilian education system explained the reasons behind their strong mathematical background. Brazillian students need to choose a specialised high school after grade nine. Their options include mathematics, arts, and military. These schools prepare the students for university by focusing on specific subjects.

In order to get into a university, one needs to write a standardized test. The students who succeed on the test have a chance to enter public universities. The students who do not do well can go to private universities where the quality of education is lower. Fernando, Lucas and Rafael all managed to get into public universities.

They mentioned that it is not uncommon for Brazilian students to use textbooks in foreign languages such as Spanish, French, or English. “One only needs to learn the basics of the language. Math is international”, said Lucas. Often multiple textbooks are used in a single course.

Fernando had a chance to work with a research group before, but for Lucas and Rafael this is their first group project. Both of them are amazed to see the math behind the financial crisis. “Even highly educated people sometimes say that financial crisis is unpredictable. It is amazing to learn that we can stay in control”, said Lucas.

Interview conducted by Mariya Boyko

Maksym and Kostya in front of the Fields Institute

Two Fields-MITACS summer undergraduate research project participants from the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kostya Drach and Maksym Skoryk, have been in Toronto for just over two weeks. Even though it is their first time abroad they have adapted to their new settings very well. During their first week in Canada they bought bikes and explored the entire GTA in just a few days. They also get many chances to show off their proficiency in english.

Kostya and Maksym are the only students selected from a very highly competitive Ukrainian system but they remain modest about their achievement. In grade eleven, Kostya won a prize for the best presentation on the Closure Theorem at a country-wide conference. Maksym has been winning mathematical olympiads since grade six. It is no surprise that they were selected.

Kostya and Maksym are working on Symmetries of Euclidian Tesselations and Their Covers. It is too early to discuss where the project is going but they introduce the idea of the project in the following way: “Tessellations are a form of mosaic. The polytope mapped onto a torus from tessellation does not have to be a regular polytope and if it happens we can estimate the degree of unregularity counting the number of flag orbits.”

Kostya and Maksym noted that it is not completely clear how the work will be divided among the team members. They have never worked on a group research project and they are looking forward to more collaborative work.

Interview conducted by Mariya Boyko