Brasília, 7/25/2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - For the first time, a Brazilian student, Giuliano Boava, 21, will participate in the International Mathematics Competition for University Students. The 10th such competition is being held this year in Romenia.

Boava is a student at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) where he is in the engineering school majoring in Control and Automation Engineering. He is the first Brazilian to take part in the math competition. In the past, the only other Latin American participant was a student from Columbia.

Boava won a silver medal at the Brazilian Math Olympics, in 2002. He also participated in an Iberian-American competition. He says he has never been studious and had problems with some subjects in high school, like geography, history and biology.

As for the competition, Boava says that the only thing he worries about is the need for logical thinking. He says that usually knowledge of algebra and calculus are sufficient to resolve the questions, but sometimes the logic needed to reach the solution can be demanding. Boava has been preparing by studying alone, doing problems from past international competitions. (AB)