ETSII Researcher Sergio Pérez wins the 'Santander Business Competition Cyber'

The final was held this past Friday at the Banco Santander facilities in Madrid and was attended by 50 people selected from more than 360 from all over Spain.

Sergio Pérez Peló, researcher within the ‘Group for Research in Algorithms for Optimization’ ( GRAFO ) of the Escuela Técnica Superior en Ingeniería Informática and a graduate of this same center, was presented to this cybersecurity competition organized by Banco Santander, “As a hobby, it was something that interested me and I tried.” The bet went well, since now a total of 15,000 euros will be distributed with the 4 members of his team. For Sergio winning has been “a joy, since there were quite powerful people from the world”.

To get there, Sergio had to go through two phases, one online, in which 365 young people over 18 years old with less than 5 years of experience took part, and a face-to-face one in which the 50 with the best scores took part.

In this second phase, teams of 4 people were assembled in a random way that faced each other in an attack-defense test. “We spent 6 hours in which we had 10 services that had to be kept active. At that time we had to attack the services of the other teams and ‘patch’ (defend) ours ”. Teams earned points for attacking, defending, and maintaining service availability.

Quick troubleshooting

What Sergio Pérez is mainly dedicated to is trying to find a way to solve mathematical problems quickly, for this, in GRAFO, they use “heuristics and metaheuristics, which is a way of applying an orientation algorithm to an operation, a method that can lead to a faster solution than if we apply an exact algorithm ”, says Sergio, who is studying for a doctorate in this field.

The group works in this matter to achieve an optimization of the processes that take place in the development of Artificial Intelligence.

After the doctorate, Sergio’s goal is to continue researching and combining this activity with teaching at the Rey Juan Carlos University.