ARP IPT Team

What the tournament actually is

The IPT (ipt.science) is the university-level "Physics World Cup." Each year it hands every national team the same set of seventeen open problems: phenomena with no clean answer and no answer key.

Teams spend close to a year on them. They build the experiments, model the physics, and find where the simple story breaks. Then they meet at the international event and present their work in the "physics fight," defending their reasoning, opposing another team's, and reviewing a third, judged by a panel of physicists.

It is about the closest thing to real research you can do as a competition. You choose how to read the problem, and the outcome is genuinely unknown when you start.

A taste of the open problems

Foam that thins and collapses, a flame that responds to sound, a bottle that glugs as it drains: everyday phenomena with no clean answer. The official problem sets from past years are at ipt.science/problems.

See it in action

A look at the tournament: the open problems, the experiments, and the physics fights.

A global stage

The IPT moves to a new host country each year. Recent and upcoming editions:

• 2023, Paris, France. École Polytechnique.
• 2024, Zürich, Switzerland. ETH Zürich.
• 2025, Warsaw, Poland. University of Warsaw.
• 2026, Stillwater, USA. Oklahoma State University.
• 2027, Milan, Italy. Politecnico di Milano.

A multi-campus team

In the United States, strong teams have come from universities like UC Berkeley, Dartmouth, Rice, UT Dallas, Oklahoma State, and the University of Arizona, each competing to represent the USA. Because ARP IPT is a nonprofit program tied to no single campus, we can bring people together from across the country, the way a real research collaboration forms, so talent in any program can find a place on the team.

Who we are looking for

We are recruiting students from across the country, and it is free to participate. The team that competes is six. We may take on more than six to begin, and the final six are chosen on contribution, capability, and fit.

What we look for

• A strong background and demonstrated ability in physics or a closely related field.
• A real appetite for open-ended, hands-on work, experiment and theory both.
• Ready to commit across the year, and to present and defend your reasoning.
• No prior competition experience required.

Eligibility (set by the organizers)

• Open to undergraduate and master's students.
• In the United States, a PhD student who does not yet hold a master's degree counts as a master's student, as long as they have not advanced to PhD candidacy.
• Participants must be 30 years old or younger.

Format and commitment

The team works together across the year, online and part-time, alongside your studies.

Format

• Weekly meetings on Zoom with the team lead, roughly 1 to 1.5 hours each.
• Independent work between meetings.
• Build the experiments, model the physics, and prepare to present and defend your work.

The commitment

• Show up to every meeting, prepared.
• Do the work between meetings.
• Stay accountable to your teammates.
• Follow through on what you take on, across the full year.

Who leads the team

The team is led by Dr. Sergey Samsonau (LinkedIn), co-founder of Authentic Research Partners, with input from Dr. Luke Perkins (LinkedIn), an ARP strategic advisor with three decades of R&D leadership in physics and energy, including the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and 21 patents.

Sergey holds a master's in theoretical physics and a PhD in physics whose research combined laboratory experiments with numerical simulation. He taught university physics, and has spent more than a decade in research and research education. He founded and led the AI for Scientific Research program at NYU, served as an AI Technical Lead there, and organized AI Meets Science, the first conference of its kind in the NYC metro area, with presenters from NASA, NIST, NYU, Cornell, Columbia, Princeton, Arizona State, the Simons Foundation, and others. His published work spans experimental physics and physics education.

The road to 2027

• Summer 2026, Assemble. Recruit and confirm the student team.
• July 2026, Problems drop. The 2027 problem set is released, and the real work begins.
• Winter, U.S. selection. Compete at the University of Arizona in Tucson for the spot to represent the USA. Dates are still to be announced.
• Spring 2027, the world stage. Win the selection, and the team represents the USA at IPT 2027 in Milan, hosted by Politecnico di Milano.

Status. ARP is forming this team now. The U.S. selection will be held at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Exact dates are still to be announced, and we will update applicants as details land.

For donors

The team is free to join. It runs as a nonprofit program, fiscally sponsored by NOPI, a registered 501(c)(3).

Donations keep the team free and open to talented students from any campus, regardless of ability to pay.

Companies and foundations that want to back the next generation of physicists can sponsor the team as donors. Funding is undesignated and supports the program as a whole. Donors are gladly recognized as supporters, and the benefit of the work flows to the students.