Superinteressante and Piauí win IMPA Award

The Fridays IMPA Journalism Award has its winners! Superinteressante and Piauí magazines were the big winners this year. The report “The Primacy of Cousins” , by journalist Bruno Vaiano, published in Superinteressante, won first place in the Mathematics category , and“The Return of Ubirajara” , by Bernardo Esteves, was chosen as the best publication in the Science Communication category. This year, the competition had 186 entries from 15 states. This number represents the second-highest participation in the history of the IMPA Journalism Award.

"The Primacy of Primes" explains the concept of prime numbers and their importance, especially for cryptography. The work also presents Euclid's proofs and the Riemann zeta function, in addition to addressing recent studies on prime numbers, such as that of the Chinese scientist Yitang Zhang, who managed to prove that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that are at most 70 million numbers apart from each other.

The report “The Return of Ubirajara” reconstructs step by step the story of the return of the holotype of the dinosaur Ubirajara jubatus, which lived in the Chapada do Araripe 110 million years ago. The work recalls that the fossils had been smuggled to Germany and were repatriated after a campaign launched on social media by Brazilian paleontologists. It was the first time that the Germans agreed to return a specimen.

In the Mathematics category , the report “Rio de Janeiro group advances in problem that has challenged mathematicians for over 90 years” , by journalist Rafael Garcia, from the newspaper O Globo , came in second place. The text, produced with an infographic, shows the work of IMPA researchers and collaborators on advances in the upper bound for Ramsey's Theorem. In third place was the report “Words become numbers: understand how ChatGPT's artificial intelligence works” , by Bruno Romani and Marcos Muller, published in Estado de S.Paulo . The report used devices such as GIFs to explain the functioning of Artificial Intelligence and how to feed it. The work explains that the system uses probabilistic analysis models to understand the relationship between words and select the terms that best meet the users' demands. The authors had already been awarded at the Thursdays edition of the IMPA Journalism Prize in 2022.

In the Science Communication category , the “ Archaeological Traces Special , ” by journalist Catalina Leite from the newspaper O Povo , came in second place. In three episodes, the series explores the scientific, social, economic, and cultural impacts of archaeology in the Serra da Capivara. Third place went to the report “ The Woman of the Past , ” by journalist Isabela Moreira from Galileu Magazine . The work, edited by Luiza Monteiro, discusses the representation of women in prehistory.

This year, the institute will pay a total of R $ 36,000 to the winners. First place winners will receive R $ 10,000. Second and third place winners will receive R $ 3,000 and R $ 2,000 respectively. The reporters will be invited to participate in webinars on the topics of their winning reports.

Hors-Concours Award

The Fridays IMPA Journalism Prize also awards the Hors-Concours Prize to Folhinha , the children's supplement of Folha de S.Paulo , and its editor Marcella Franco. This year, IMPA debuted logic challenges from OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools) in the newspaper. IMPA is responsible for the OBMEP Portal , which provides free educational support material for elementary and high school students. Since April, fun puzzles that stimulate logical reasoning have been featured in the online and print editions of Folha. The material is developed at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) by the Mathematics Puzzle Portal team.

The Hors-Concours Award is given in recognition of a partnership that significantly contributes to the dissemination of mathematics. The award does not include a monetary prize.

The winners were selected by a jury of scientists and journalists, comprised of the director-general of IMPA, Marcelo Viana, the president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Helena Nader, and journalists Sabine Righetti, researcher at Labjor-Unicamp and founder of Agência Bori, and Raphael Gomide, coordinator of IMPA's press office.

Honorable Mentions

As in previous editions, the jury selected five articles to receive Honorable Mention. In Mathematics , two works from the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper were selected: “Dropout affects 7 out of 10 students in teacher training programs in exact sciences” , by journalist Paulo Saldaña, and “Talent is evenly distributed between genders, says Mondays woman to receive the Fields Medal” , by journalist Gabriel Alves.

In the Science Communication category , honorable mentions went to the report “Living Medicines” , by Diogo Sponchiato, from Veja Saúde ; “Synthetic DNA could store digital data ” , by Domingos Zaparolli, from Revista Pesquisa Fapesp ; and to the TV Globo series , “Federal Universities” , by Mayra Almeida, Marina Araújo, Roberta Pennafort, Guilherme Rodrigues Hamanda, Sérgio Telles, Rafael Quintão, Sérgio Rodrigues, Sérgio Sant´ana, Aline Lima, Caroline Batista, Cynthia Strougo, Mariana Eirim, Luciana Berling, Jennifer Cavalcanti, Lucas Borges and Daniela Carlini.