CMO champions win trips to Disney and NASA

14/1/2025

The 100 best-placed students in the Carioca Math Olympics (OCM) received travel kits to visit Disney and Nasa in the United States on Tuesday (14) in Rio de Janeiro. The group leaves for Orlando, Florida, on January 20th. The trip is an initiative of Rio’s City Hall to reward students who stand out in the science competition, which was created in 2021. The OCM is organized by the Municipal Department of Education and is supported by IMPA. In its four editions, the Olympiad has had more than 1.42 million participants.

“We’ve been partners since the first edition of the OCM, helping to prepare the OCM exam. Ever since I’ve been director of IMPA, we’ve wanted to extend OBMEP to the early years of elementary school. We lacked a bit of courage because we knew we had to learn a different language to communicate the questions in a way that would be accessible to children in this age group. And it was the experience with the OCM that gave us the conviction that we could do this,” said IMPA’s director-general, Marcelo Viana, in reference to the creation of the Olimpíada Mirim-OBMEP, aimed at students in the 2nd to 5th grades of elementary school, in 2022.

For the trip, the students received a kit including clothes, sneakers and a backpack, as well as a passport with an American visa. The award ceremony took place at the Rio de Janeiro Yacht Club in Urca.

“This is transformative in the lives of these children. Having the Math Olympiad already encourages positive and healthy competition. What’s more, we have another challenge: to be able to go to Disney and Nasa, to see other places and see how a different world can be built. For us, it’s a joy to give this award,” said the mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes.

The aim of the OCM is to stimulate learning in mathematics, to engage and identify talent, and to promote healthy competition among the school’s students. The Olympiad is aimed at all students enrolled in the municipality’s schools who are in the 2nd to 9th year of elementary school.

“We’re sending out the message that studying is worthwhile. We want our children to be able to set their sights on studying. Here we have the math champions of the city of Rio. They’re going to meet Mickey and the spaceship. This is the child from Complexo do Alemão, Vidigal, the West Zone, from any corner of our city, understanding that the path of study is the best bet they can make. We have placed Rio as the great math capital of our country,” said the Secretary of Education, Renan Ferreirinha

CMO history

In 2021, the first edition of the CMO was attended by more than 200,000 students from Rio’s municipal schools. In the following year’s edition, the number doubled: more than 400,000 students took part. In 2023, 420,000 students took part in the competition. And in 2024, around 400,000 students took part.

“This award represents the conquest of an effort, of studying at dawn to take the exam. It’s a huge achievement for me. I’ve liked math ever since I was little, I’ve always liked doing math. I always wanted to win, but I never expected to. It will be the first time I’ve been on an international trip. At Nasa, I’m hoping to get into an anti-gravity room and, at Disney, I’m hoping for a show, to see the castle, something I’ve always wanted to do,” said Geovan Brito, 15, a resident of Mangueira and approved for the first year of secondary school at Escola Municipal José Veríssimo, in Rocha.

Specific math lessons

In order to further stimulate and develop interest in mathematics, the first Olympic Class was created in May 2023, with students who had excellent results in the first editions of the Olympiad coming together for special math classes. The aim is to prepare these students who have shown aptitude in the Olympiad for other major competitions, such as OBMEP.

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