You couldn’t have picked a more appropriate time of year to finish up the STEM Zombie Challenge. On October 5th, in the month that is most associated with the ghoulish and spooky holiday of Halloween, the top student teams during the course of the competition descended on Indian River Library in Chesapeake, VA to compete for victory and prizes.

The final round carried a title that was also appropriate: “Halloween Zombie Challenge.”

Starting on July 23rd, students in and around the Chesapeake area had the opportunity to participate in the STEM Zombie Challenge at their local library. The event, which was sponsored by local organizations and supported by FlexSim, encouraged junior high and high school-aged students to work together, learn, and have fun while playing a game that was built into a FlexSim model. More than 50 individuals played at least once, and the best teams throughout the course of the summer were invited to face off in the finals.

ModSim Connected, which dedicated countless hours and supplied the servers that made the event possible, recorded the finalists and created a short video of the winning teams in the final rounds of play (the video can be viewed below). The students ended up with quite the early Halloween presents: each was awarded a new Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

The idea behind the game was to demonstrate a simulation model in a fun environment that would engage young minds. ModSim Connected is directly involved with a larger initiative by the Commonwealth of Virginia designed to “identify modeling and simulation assets and capabilities” and “place an enhanced emphasis on modeling and simulation related economic development.”

FlexSim is already working with ModSim Connected to determine how best to expand on the zombie model, and preliminary discussions about another game are in the works. The simulation engineers of tomorrow have to come from the youth of today, and we hope efforts such as these will spark their interest in modeling and simulation.