Our sponsorships center on the pipelines for two international Olympiads: the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Given our budget, at this stage we are primarily focusing on these two.
Our support follows each program’s trajectory. Where progress stalls, we would rather pause a sponsorship than end it; paused programs can return at any open call.
Exceptional talent does not stop at these two competitions. We keep a small portfolio for work outside this pipeline: other STEM Olympiads, the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO) pipeline, and talented and gifted education programs. If that’s you, apply through the “Everything else” route below.
We receive more strong proposals than we can fund. Declining an application usually reflects our capacity, not the quality of your work.
We run three open calls a year; dates will be announced on this page. Decisions come about six weeks after the window closes.
Our research shows that math and science Olympiads are among the strongest early signals of STEM potential: medalists number only in the hundreds each year, yet account for around one in ten major scientific prize winners.
But identification is only the beginning. Developing that potential takes challenging material, real instruction, peers, and routes onward. Olympiad programs are among the few institutions that bring all of this together. That is what we sponsor: the competitions that surface unusual ability, and the training that helps it grow.
We look for programs where our sponsorship can make a clear difference in identifying and nurturing talent, and help us learn what works.
The research behind this program: Finding Young Einsteins · Invisible Geniuses (AER: Insights) · the Global Talent Lab.
