Artur Kirkoryan

Mathematician and engineer; IMO 2004 gold medalist (Bulgaria), PhD Mathematics UIUC, creator of Puzzle Prime, World Puzzle Championship competitor. Career spans academic research at UIUC, quant-titled roles at FactSet and EY advisory, and current Algorithm Engineer at sportsbook software firm FIRST - Best in Sports.

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• Quant employment verification: NOT CONFIRMED. He held real quantitative-titled roles, but none at a quantitative investment, trading, market-making, or hedge-fund firm: Quantitative Researcher at FactSet (Jun 2020 - Apr 2025), a financial data/analytics vendor that sells data and software to investment professionals rather than trading its own capital; 'Consulting' (Quantitative Advisory Services) at EY (2017, New York), a professional-services/advisory firm; and Algorithm Engineer at FIRST - Best in Sports (first.bet), a sportsbook software provider. Identity is supported, but no employer is a quant investment/trading firm, so no qualifying quant-finance employment is confirmed. FactSet/EY role details are index/LinkedIn-sourced, not independent primary-source confirmation.
• Gold medal, International Mathematical Olympiad 2004 (Athens), representing Bulgaria, scoring 35/42 (6,6,4,7,7,5); ranked 20th equal. Competed under the spelling 'Artur Kirkorian'.2004
• Founder/creator of Puzzle Prime (puzzleprime.com), an educational puzzle and brain-teaser site; described in a Homeschool.com feature as created by 'the mathematician Artur Kirkoryan'.
• PhD in Mathematics at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; dissertation 'Sparse matrix spaces'. LinkedIn About self-describes as 'Doctor in Mathematics and Master in Electrical Engineering. Gold medalist from the International Mathematical Olympiad in Athens'04.'
• Co-authored research with Mohamed-Ali Belabbas: 'On the structural stability of random systems' (arXiv 2003.04139) and 'On Stable Systems with Random Structure', SIAM J. Control Optim. 60(1):458-478 (2022).2022
• Long-running competitor at the World Puzzle Championship for Bulgaria, listed from 2005 through at least WPC 2024/2025 and as a WPC 2026 participant.
• Worked 2011-2018 as Research/Teaching Assistant and 2019 as Postdoctoral Researcher at UIUC; rated as a TA on RateMyProfessors (UIUC).
• Public X account @KirkoryanArtur (x.com/kirkoryanartur), location Champaign, IL and link to puzzleprime.com, joined March 2016, ~19 followers. Small account identified via search snippet; likely but not primary-confirmed.Mar 2016
• Credited as contributor/playtester in the itch.io game LOK by Letibus Design, indicating involvement in independent puzzle-game development.
• Active in puzzle communities: credited puzzle answers on Puzzling Stack Exchange and a Puzzle Prime Facebook group he administers.