Who We Are

AMCUA is a volunteer organization that provides American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) prep classes and offers AMC contests to students currently residing in Ukraine. This organization was started by Larisa Bukalov in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our goal is to deliver additional academic as well as social and emotional support to Ukrainian students that are interested in mathematics.

We are always looking for math enthusiasts and supporters that would like to volunteer. If interested, have a working knowledge of Ukrainian or Russian language, and trained as a math professional please do not hesitate to contact us and join our team.

Larisa Bukalov

Math Association of America (MAA) Liaison to Ukraine
Email: amc12.ukraine@gmail.com

Larisa has been teaching in NYC public schools since 1998. She won several awards for excellence in classroom teaching. Additionally, she is a five-time recipient of the Math for America Master Teacher fellowship and 2023 Muller Award winner.

Larisa was born in Ukraine where she simultaneously graduated from a specialized math high school in Vinnitsa, and a distance learning high school at Moscow State University. After emigrating to the United States, she learned English while earning both her bachelor’s degree in math and her master’s degree in math education from Queens College, City University of New York.

Larisa has extensive experience providing professional development to pre-service and in-service teachers. She has provided professional development to early career teachers and math supervisors in New York City on Geometry, Probability, and Problem Solving.  She co-authored The Math Teacher’s Toolbox, 2020, and Practical Algebra. 2022, in English and Forms of Group Work in Mathematics Lessons, 2023, in Ukrainian, as well as many articles on problem solving and teaching mathematics methods in English and Ukrainian.

For the past 20 years she has been coaching the Bayside High School Math Team. Over the years Larisa tried to make sure that all students in her school that are interested in math are welcome to the math team and participate in math competitions.

Yury Volvovskiy (FIRST PRIZE, RUSSIAN MATH OLYMPIAD), USA

Yury grew up in Moscow, Russia. He enjoyed solving math puzzles since the age of 5 and in high school regularly competed in multiple math competition. His best achievement was the first prize at the Russian Math Olympiad in 1993. Yury went on to complete graduate studies in mathematics and then worked as a quantitative analyst. He is now a software engineer with Google and still enjoys math puzzles.

Jenya Soprunova, Professor of Mathematics at Kent State University < USA

Jenya is a mathematics professor at Kent State University working in the field of discrete geometry. Throughout her career, she had many opportunities to work with mathematically gifted students. She taught advanced math to high school students while working on her undergraduate degree. She took part in preparing high school students for the Tournament of Towns during her PhD studies at the University of Toronto. After moving to Cleveland, she spent three summers working as a math instructor for the Summer Honors Institute for gifted high school students.

Constantine Bulavenko, 11th grader at KPL #171 “Leader” in Kyiv, Ukraine

Before 7th grade, Constantine lived in Chicago and studied at Edison Regional Gifted Center. He was a participant and winner of more than 50 math competitions in the US and in Canada. In 2022, Constantine got 1st place in three Kyiv city Olympiads for math, chemistry, and physics, as well as in AMC 12 in Ukraine. Constantine volunteered as a teacher of AMC 8, 10, and 12 for students at the IX All-Ukrainian math summer school “Math Olymp”. He is a winner of a few all-Ukrainian competitions. Constantine is a participant of the “Yuliya’s Dream” math enrichment and research program at MIT, where he studied knot theory. His favorite subjects are graph theory and organic chemistry. In addition, Constantine enjoys biking, ice skating, volleyball, and tinkering with Arduino.