On Friday March 27th, the 2026 Pitt Undergraduate Integration Bee took place in Alumni Hall 343. The event was hosted by Sasha Bakrenev, President of the Math Club. We were very excited to have 70+ Pitt undergraduates participate in the competition, which consisted of four stages, prequalifying, showcase, qualifying, and the final brackets round. Many Pitt students, friends, and family members came to cheer for the participants.
The numbers of contestants in each stage were 70+ --> 22 --> 13 --> 4. The nine contestants (four of whom are FHC honors students and six of whom are Swanson School students) who were eliminated before the final bracket round received the Honorable Mention prizes: a Pitt Roaring Spring laminated folder, a Frederick Honors College notepad, and a pen with Math department logo.
The four contestants (three of whom are FHC honors students) advanced to the semi-final bracket rounds. Lastly, the final integral \int \frac{\sin^2 x -\sin x +1 - \frac{1}{\sin x}}{1+\sin^2 x}\, \dx determined our 2026 Pitt integration Bee champion, Luke Douglas, who received the Champion T-shirt and was also a raffle winner of a pack of Pilot G2 - extra fine pen. The other winners, in order, were Elli Johnson, Anthony Arshoun, and Thomas Maxwell. These four winners shared the $200 in bookstore certificates as a reward for their outstanding integration performance: see the attached pictures. Congratulations to all the winners!
THANK YOU to everyone who participated in this event in any way!!! It was great to have such enthusiastic contestants and audience members. Some of attendees also walked away with fun raffle prizes such as staplers, erasers, stickers, a Pitt dual-pocket phone wallet, a Rubber Duckie Pitt Script, a Chester the Rooster LED mood light, a FHC beanies, a FHC volleyball, and items with the Math department logo, including mugs, bookmarks, wallets, and Rubik’s cubes, etc. Students from the Frederick Honors college received Honors OCC points for attending the event. Our volunteers also received some gifts such as pens, volleyballs, beanies, water bottles generously provided by the Frederick Honors college.
This event was made possible by:
- the wonderful volunteering work of the Math Club members and undergraduate students. See the attached pictures,
- the help of the graduate students: Chanuka Dissanayake, Edison Hauptman, Ian MacIntyre, Lily DiPaulo, and Isabel Barrio Sanchez,
- the help of the faculty members: Ellen Bao, Tom Everest, Jeremiah Morgan, Roxana Popescu, and Sheng Xiong,
- the equipment and logistic support from the staff members Richard Misura, William Tarleton, Lou Lane, Max Glider, Phillip Fry, Benjamin Noah, Jason Irwin, Jessica Hohman, Kait Long, and Cathy Conley, and Diane Bova,
- the advertising efforts of many TAs, faculty members, and departmental academic coordinators in Dietrich School, Swanson School, and School of Computing and Information Sciences, etc.
Finally, as always, THANKS to the David C. Frederick Honors College and the Math Department for funding this competition!