The 13th IOAA starts! Meet the Korean, the Lithuanian and the Slovenian team!
The Korean team
The Korean team members are: Gyehun Ahn, Jungeun Kim, Junghyun Hwang, Minchan Song and Seungjun Oh. They participated in Korea Astronomy Olympiad, and successfully accomplished assignments, in-depth interview, autumn and winter camps and final exam. Through this process, they were selected as representative of Korea. Here are the team members messages and infos about the students!
The Lithuanian team
Their team members are high school students from two biggest Lithuanian cities, Vilnius and Kaunas. They are two girls, Vaiva Pilkauskaitė and Paulina Erichsmeier, and three boys, Ignas Mačiulis, Ignas Juodžbalis and Damian Michalčonok.
Lithuanian team members have different stories how they became interested in astronomy. Also, their favorite fields of astronomy are diverse.
– Vaiva: I was a curious child who liked to gaze at the night sky and wonder what it is all about, but I got into astronomy encouraged by my friend to pursue a more definite goal.
– Paulina: I got involved in astronomy in the 6th grade when a telescope has been bought and a question arose how and what purpose for, I should use it. Then I started reading books on astronomy, making observations, participating in forums, and National Astronomy Olympiads. I met fantastic friends and colleagues who helped me to advance in this area. I am mostly interested in stellar evolution because it reveals the nature of vital chemical elements.
– Damian: My interest in astronomy arose when I began observations of the sky with an amateur telescope at the age of about 12. Eventually, these observations and an advice of my physics teacher encouraged me to try National Astronomy Olympiad at first for fun, which ended up being a great idea.
My favorite area is planetary science, especially exploration of exoplanets.
– Ignas Mačiulis: My interest in astronomy was awakened in an early childhood when I opened a big colourful book about the Universe for the first time. I was fascinated by enigmatic pictures of celestial objects, weird phenomena, and discussions about hypothetical alien life forms. At present time my favorite area is space exploration and colonization.
– Ignas Juodžbalis: I got into astronomy in 5th grade, while looking for a science related afterschool class to join, I discovered that there was one dedicated to astronomy and I realized that I like the subject. My favourite field is Cosmology since it deals with interesting questions such as the origin and fate of the Universe.
Some of the hobbies of our team members:
– Vaiva: I enjoy painting and walking around in nature.
– Paulina: Also, I am interested in languages. Currently I’m working as a Spanish teacher and Spanish language is one of my life’s greatest passions! I also love reading novels and writing short stories.
– Ignas Mačiulis: I like science fiction and heavy metal music. I take up historical fencing (with the Hungarian sabre). I spend a lot of my spare time doing some metalwork or blacksmithing.
– Ignas Juodžbalis: I am really interested in history, especially military history. Therefore, I have recently taken up historic fencing, after finding out that there was a club in my city after all and began dabbling in sword collecting. I also enjoy playing tabletop RPGs.
– Damian: Biology is my other favorite field – I intend to study genetics, the branch of biology. Also, I am fond of experimenting in a chemistry lab.
We expect interesting problems and tasks enabling us to test our skills and knowledge of astronomy. We hope that the days to be spent in Hungary will be full of exciting impressions and that we will meet many new friends!
We wish all teams to enjoy the contest and do their best to win any kind of medals! Also, our boys would like to invite the Hungarian team to a chat about Hungarian sabre fencing or archery. Indeed, our team members would like to interact and make friends with any other team members.
The Slovenian team
Members: Furious Five:Tigress – Ema Mlinar, Viper – Jon Judež, Crane – Matej Mali, Monkey – Vito Levstik, Mantis – Marko Čmrlec, and of course team leaders & observer: Master Shifu – Andrej Guštin, Po – Krištof Skok, Elephant – Rok Kovač.
Intorduciont: The most we love statistics and drawing plots on millimeter (or even better – logarithmic) paper by
hand. And of course pluging the numbers in calculators. And as a cherry on top of cream finding mistakes in our solutions (and in solutions of textbooks).
Their message: Bring frisbees, cards, board games, guitars and pianos, balls for sports. And let the best win.
