The IMDEA Software Institute organized the fourth edition of the “Gymkhana: Software Matters, an event that takes place during the Madrid Science and Innovation Week promoted by the Madrimasd Foundation and the Madrid Regional Government, on November 14th.
The 2024 edition was attended by 25 high school students from IES Francisco Umbral (Ciempozuelos) and Colegio Estudio (Aravaca).
Blanca Gutiérrez, Head of Communications at the Institute, welcomed the attendees and introduced Manuel Carro, Director of IMDEA Software, who highlighted the importance of software in people’s daily lives and how without it the world would simply stop.
After his speech, Gutiérrez explained the activity to the students, provided the fundamental guidelines, and gave way to the formation of the teams.
The students were divided into five groups, each with a number, and were given a pack containing a map, essential for reaching the five challenges, and an evaluation sheet that had to be signed by the researchers. Each of the challenges addressed software-related topics such as: artificial intelligence, concurrency, parallel sums, program analysis and verification, and cryptography.
They had 13 minutes to solve each challenge where researchers Diego Castejón, Daniel Jurjo, Konstantinos Papaioannou, Daniela Ferreiro, Marcos Grandury, Ignacio Ballesteros, Jorge Gallego, Marco Negro and Giannis Roumpos were waiting for them to explain everything they needed to solve the problems of each software challenge as a team.
Once the Gymkhana was over, the groups met in the auditorium, where the researchers explained the solutions to all the challenges and solved the doubts that some students had. Afterwards, the researchers counted the scores to discover the winning team and the prizes were awarded to the four participants of the victorious group, from IES Francisco Umbral. Finally, the students carried out a digital survey.
