22/11/2019

Claudio Landim wins award for contribution to Education.

IMPA's Deputy Director, Claudio Landim, is the winner of the 2019 Science Education Prize, whose theme this year was "Development of Educational Scientific Material." The researcher was chosen from among candidates from Latin America and the Caribbean for his significant and innovative contributions to educational scientific material, such as the creation of the Portal do Saber (Knowledge Portal) and the OBMEP na Escola (OBMEP in School) Program.

"This award recognizes the work of primary and secondary school teachers and researchers in producing teaching materials to improve the quality of mathematics education in the country," said Landim.

Awarded by the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS-ROLAC), the distinction is given every four years to scientists who have developed creative programs that improve the quality of science education in basic education. The winner receives US$3,000 and a diploma. Landim had already received the Mathematics Prize from the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2006.

Claudio Landim, a native of Rio de Janeiro, has been a researcher at IMPA since 1994 and the institute's deputy director since 2008. A specialist in probability, he graduated in mathematics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). He earned a master's degree in Statistics and Probability from IMPA, a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Paris Diderot (1990), and a postdoctoral degree from the Courant Institute at New York University (1994).

Landim has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) since 2001 and received the commendation of the National Order of Scientific Merit in 2010. In 1997, he was awarded the Bronze Medal of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) for his contributions to the theory of hydrodynamic behavior of particle systems.

The OBMEP Knowledge Portal offers a range of free materials related to the curriculum from the 6th grade of elementary school to the 3rd year of high school. With over 1500 video lessons, the YouTube channel Portal da Matemática has accumulated 11 million views and more than 300,000 subscribers since 2013. In addition to audiovisual content, the Knowledge Portal has 200 theoretical material booklets, 200 exercise notebooks, 44,000 quizzes, 1535 solved problems, and 160 interactive applications.

Aimed at mathematics teachers in basic education, the OBMEP in School Program selects and trains approximately 900 teachers from state and municipal public schools each year to teach mathematics to 20 students from their schools throughout the country. The objective is to contribute to the training of mathematics teachers by encouraging more in-depth studies and the adoption of new teaching practices in classrooms.

In the second phase of OBMEP, students participating in the program perform much better than other candidates and have a lower dropout rate. At Level 1 (6th and 7th grades), the score is 97% better, and the dropout rate is 22% lower among students in the program; at Level 2 (8th and 9th grades), the result is 119% better, and the dropout rate is 20% lower; at Level 3 (High School), the performance is 141% higher and the dropout rate is 13.6% lower.