K-12 Education and Outreach - Take AIM Competition

Take AIM Competition

Analytics, Innovation and Mathematics (AIM) Online Competition for High School Students

Competition Sponsor: INFORMS Education Outreach Committee K-12

🚀 Overview 🚀

This online competition invites high school students and educators to participate in an exciting and challenging optimization game. The mission of our sponsor is to enhance student engagement and bring in awareness for operations research and mathematics, with the goal of motivating their future participation in analytical problem-solving practice.

A Guide to the competition could be found in this site. All the team members should read the guide for detail instructions.

📅 Key Dates 📅

Sep 5 - Oct 17: Self-learning through online game
Oct 13: Team registration deadline
Oct 18 2:00-3:00 pm EST: Competition Stage
Nov 1 2:00-3:00 pm EST: Presentation Stage
Nov 8: Winners Announced and Prizes distributed

🎓 Who Can Enter? 🎓

U.S. High School Students with an educator or teacher advisor (school email required). Recommended size is up to 4 students per team.

🎮🕹️ Competition Stage 🕹️🎮

Online Game: Burrito Optimization Game by Gurobi
Details: Participate in a hosted tournament using Championship Mode on the online game and submit your results within a specified time frame while trying to get the highest score.
Criteria for Stage Winners:
- Score: Highest score in Championship Mode tournament.
- Time: Play game for an hour and complete all rounds to submit the final score (Oct 18 2:00-3:00).

📽️💻 Presentation Stage 💻📽️

Presentation: Present on lessons learned and how you got to optimal solutions during competition stage.
Details: Based on winners from the competition stage, finalists will present on their findings, lessons learned, and strategy to a panel of judges who will select the winners of the overall competition. Upload your presentation files here no later than October 29.
Criteria for Final Winners:
- - Insights: Presentation content should articulate comprehension of mathematical, operations research, or system design principles used in the strategy of playing the game.
  - Content: Evaluated on clarity, presentation skills, and delivery and participation of team.
  - Copyright: Presentations must be original work only, no copyrighted or third-party materials (including no use of generative AI).
  - Design: Visually engaging and creative - reduce text and highlight visuals.

🏆 Awards & Recognition 🏆

🥇 1st Place: $2,000 + Certificate

🥈 2nd Place: $1,000 + Certificate

🥉 3rd Place: $500+ Certificate

Select winners and associated presentations will be featured on our K-12 Committee website to support learning and STEM outreach.

📅 Registration 📅

Deadline: Oct 13, 2025

Link to Register Team

📩 Organizers & Contact 📩

Paola Furlanetto, Tuba Ketenci, Gaby Barrera, Neil Desnoyers, Ana Muriel

📝 Presentation Submission Form 📝

The presentation submission form is available here.

📚 References 📚

Competition Guide (with all information for registering your team, participating, and rubrics): Competition Guide.

Burrito Optimization Game - Guide for Playing.

Burrito Optimization Game - Slides for Walk-through of Game.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions ❓

What do I need to do to register my team?

First, sign up using our form to register your team for the overall competition here: Link to Register Team.
Second, follow this guide to sign up and use a Gurobi account for your team: Competition Guide.

Is this meant for integrating within a class or an after-school club?

We encourage either method, whatever makes most sense for your team. The only time requirement is to attend the session for the competition on Oct 18 2-3pm EST and if selected as a finalist, attend the session for the presentation stage on Nov 1 2-3pm EST.

Can there be more than one team per school?

There can be any number of teams per high school. No limit. All need to register so we make sure we have enough bandwidth We encourage participation among as many students as possible.
An advisor/educator or teacher may be the point of contact or verification for multiple teams. The only requirement is to have an email linked to the high school so that we can make sure the teams are made up of high school students from a US high school.

How many students per team?

We recommend size of 4 students per team due to the gameplay of the Gurobi game used in this competition. While more students can be involved, there is limited actions they will all be able to take during the Gurobi competition hour and it may be higher to coordinate among larger groups.

Have questions? We’ve got answers! at IndustrialEngOutreach@gmail.com

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