50 students from IES Francisco Umbral (Ciempozuelos) and IES Liceo San Pablo took part in the “Gymkhana: Software Matters”, organized by the IMDEA Software Institute on the occasion of the XXII Science and Innovation Week, organized by the Madrid Regional Government in collaboration with the Foundation Madrimasd.

The director of the Institute, Manuel Carro, began talking to students and teachers about the research carried out at the institute and the importance of software. “If software stops working, everything stops: mobile phones, lights, modern cars, electricity… Without software we wouldn’t have the world we have today”, spotted Carro.

Blanca Gutiérrez, Communication Manager of the Institute, presented the activity and gave the fundamental guidelines to the 15 to 17 year old students.

Students were divided into five groups and they had to follow a map to get to the five challenges of the Gymkahana. 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 David Balbás, Diego Castejón, Martin Ceresa, Louis Rustenholz, Claudia Bartoli, Juan Manuel Copia, Daniel Jurjo, Laura Herrero, and Fernando Macías as challenge managers explained explained to them everything they required to solve the games as a team.

Once the “Gymkhana: Software Matters” was over, the groups met in the Lecture Hall, where the researchers tallied the scores until the winning team was discovered. Finally, prizes were awarded to the ten members of the winning team, from IES Francisco Umbral.