14/02/2017
Hello everyone!
Once again, both Venezuela and the Simon Bolivar University harvest scientific achievements. On this occasion, a team of two (2) professors and six (6) seniors in physics at the Simon Bolivar University have been selected for the first time to represent Venezuela in the International Physicists’ Tournament (IPT 2017), which will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden between April 8th and 13th [1]. Our team’s name is Aragüaney Dynamics - ‘AraDy’ for short – and you can meet our team members below.
As preparation for the tournament, a series of open problems in physics must be solved by different means (following either an experimental, theoretical or in some cases, even a computational approach). These solutions will be presented, discussed, and debated at the tournament, where we will be competing against several teams from different countries, as a jury consisting of professors and researchers from different universities around the world evaluates the results.
In December, due to a high request for participating places in the competition, a preselection process was made, where a report of one of the tournament’s problems was presented. During this stage of the competition, Venezuela classified for the first time to occupy one of the eighteen (18) available positions. We would love to attend this tournament, since it is an opportunity to represent both our institution and Venezuela in the best way we can, all the while showing the professional qualities that characterize Venezuelan scientists.
We believe that our solutions to the problems show a great amount of originality and hard work which deserves to be presented at the competition, where other scientists can evaluate them. We also believe that this is an excellent opportunity to encourage involvement of young students in scientific research and as an inspiration for other Venezuelan students. We hope that our efforts not only contribute to our formation and generate favorable results on the tournament, but also that they result in scientific articles.
To attend the tournament, we need resources to afford all the different expenses, which include the tournament’s registration fee, airplane tickets, travel insurance and food, as well as materials and instruments to perform the experiments. Due to the difficult economic situation in our country [2][3][4][5], even paying the tournament’s attendance fee alone is an incredible challenge. For this reason, we have decided to start a crowdfunding campaign, hoping we can represent our country for the first time in the International Physicists’ Tournament.
This campaign’s goal is to collect between $(16-20)K to cover travel expenses -$(2000-1600) per participant (8)- $1068 for the registration fee, travel insurance -$(100-50) per participant (8)- $100 in materials costs and the deductions made by the GoFundMe team that made this campaign possible and to whom we are very grateful.
We appreciate any help we can get in order to overcome this economic barrier. If a monetary contribution is not possible, then spreading the word through social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) is also an incredible help.
Thank you very much!
Our best wishes,
AraDy, Venezuela’s IPT team.
References
[1] http://2017.iptnet.info/
[2] http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/29/investing/venezuela-worthless-currency/index.html
[3] http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/25/news/economy/venezuela-breaking-point/index.html
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/world/americas/venezuela-crisis-what-next.html
[5] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35622188
# # # Para español, leer más abajo. # # # (English) Hello everyone! Once again, both Venezuela and the Simon Bolivar University harvest scientific achievements. On this occasion, a team of two (2) professors and six (6) seniors in physics at the Simon Bolivar University have been selected for the...
