Thursday, June 18, the IMDEA Software Institute hosted a new edition of its annual gathering “My I[M]DEA Software: Poster Competition”. This event brings together interns, PhD students, and members of the center to showcase the progress made in their respective research areas.
This year, the event hit a new record for participation. This edition featured work presented by IMDEA Software personnel: Georgia Christofidi, Elvira Moreno Sánchez, Junlang Wang, Lefteris Georgiadis, Jorge Gallego, Bautista Peirone, Panagiotis Georgios Pennas, Risto Kivilahti, Douglas Li, Andrea Iannetta, Alessio Ferrarini, Octavio Rassi, Daud Ahmed and Gonzalo Martínez de Sola. Researchers from other centers also participated: Arivarasan Karmegam and Sergio Díaz-Aranda (IMDEA Networks), Teodor A. Diaconescu and Shahin Ebrahimi Kia (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos), and Álvaro García Moreno (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid).
In addition to the posters, participants faced the challenge of presenting their work in under a minute. Using an elevator pitch format, they successfully synthesized the key points of their research in record time.
A new addition to this year’s edition was a contest to design the event’s official T-shirt. This initiative opened participation to both the institute’s researchers and students from the ETSIInf. at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). The design by Juan Romanos, a research intern at the institute, was ultimately chosen as the winner. On the other hand, the proposal by Tania Carro, an intern in the communication department, was named the finalist.
Following a difficult deliberation due to the high quality of the submissions, the jury awarded the best poster prizes to:
• First prize: Elvira Moreno, SCAR: Side-Channel Analyzer & Repairer
• Second prize: Panagiotis Pennas, “Batch me if you can”: Exploiting Batch Invariance and Non-Determinism in LLM Serving Systems
• Third prize: Georgia Christofidi, “Aceso: Latency-Aware Geo-Distribution of Microservices for Cost-Effective Carbon Reduction”
Meanwhile, the prize for the best elevator pitch, decided by the audience’s vote, went to: Georgia Christofidi and Panagiotis Pennas.
To wrap up the event, all the institute’s staff gathered around the building to enjoy a joint lunch.
The “My I[M]DEA Software: Poster Competition” provides a familiar setting where young researchers can prepare for a professional environment in which communicating their research is just as essential a skill as the research itself.
