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Imagine Cup 2011 Winners Selected

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 07/14/11

Winners have been selected for the ninth annual Microsoft Imagine Cup. The company also revealed plans to launch a $3 million competitive grant program later this summer.

A field of 350,000 registrants was narrowed to more than 400 students from 70 countries who competed at the worldwide finals in New York.

The theme for this year's competition was imagining a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems. Though it was not required, entrants were encouraged to use the United Nations Millennium Development Goals as a starting point. The Millennium Development Goals are ending hunger and poverty, promoting gender equality and empowerment, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating widespread disease, ensuring environmental stability, and developing a global partnership for development.

Three winners were chosen in each of five competition categories. The categories were software design, embedded development, game design, digital media, and Windows Phone 7.

In the software design category, students created software, service solutions, and applications intended to benefit society. The winners were:

• First place went to Team Hermes from Institute of Technology Sligo in Ireland;
• Team Note Taker from Arizona State University took second place; and
• The Oasys Team from German Jordanian University, Petra University, and Princess Sumaya University in Jordan finished third.

In the embedded development category, students worked with hardware and software to build solutions that use Windows Embedded Compact 7. The winners were:

• NTHUCS from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan won first place;
• Harmonicare from Tsinghua University in China won second place; and
• Third place went to Endeavour_Design of The "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi in Romania.

The game design category consisted of three tracks, mobile, web, and Windows/Xbox, in which students designed games that helped to improve the global community. The winners were:

• Geekologic from Ingesup and Supinfogame in France took first place in the mobile track;
• Second place went to Close World Mobile of Epitech in France;
• Third place in the mobile subcategory went to Team Dragon from Rice University;
• Team Cellardoor of Poland's Uniwersytet Im. Adama Mickiewicza won first place in the web track;
• Second place went to Signum Fidei from De La Salle University in the Phillipines;
• Quegee Team from Slovak University of Technology in Slovakia took third;
• Signum Games from Universidade Positivo in Brazil won first place in the Windows/Xbox track;
• Second place went to JubJub of Mahidol University in Thailand; and
• Third place in the Windows/Xbox subcategory went to Wicked Team from Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic.

In the digital media category students created Web videos to generate awareness of global issues. The winners were:

• Romanian team M.N.A. from North West College, London and Universitatea Din Bucuresti won first place;
• Brothers Forever from Sultan Qaboos University in Oman took second; and
• Cottoncandy from Taiwan's National Taipei University of Technology finished in third place.

In the Windows Phone 7 category students created XAP applications to help solve world problems. The winners were:

• Korean team Homerun from Dongguk University, Sangmyung University, and Kwangwoon University took first place;
• Another Korean team, Zipi Zigi of Seoul National University of Technology, Soongsil University in Seoul, Korea University of Technology and Education, and Ewha Women's University, came in second; and
• The LifeLens Project of the University of Central Florida, Harvard, the University of California, Davis, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, San Diego took third place.

The Imagine Cup also included four challenges that gave students an opportunity to win a share of $215,000 and other prizes.

In the interoperability challenge students were asked to pair free open source software with technologies from Microsoft and other companies to create new applications. The winners were:

• Greek team alaniarides from the Athens University of Economics and Business won first place;
• Second place went to Bells Team of Federal Univeristy of Pernambuco in Brazil; and
• Demoscene Spirit from Uniwerstytet Adama Mickiewicza W Poznaniu in Poland won third place.

In the IT challenge, students were tested on their knowledge of IT systems with unique problems to solve. The winners were:

• Jean-Sebastien Duchene of France's Supinfo International University took first place;
• Poland's Blazej Matuszyk from Poznan University of Technology came in second; and
• Third place went to Yunheng Mong from Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore.

For the orchard challenge students created modules such as shopping carts, checkout systems, social interactivity, and geolocation services. The winners were:

• MP Brun of Denmark's Aarhus University won first place;
• Second place went to Virtual Dreams-Orchard from Escola Politecnica Da Universidade De Sao Paulo and Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil; and
• Zveen Zveen Team from Serbia's Metroplitian University and Tehnicki Fakultet Mihajilo Pupin came in third.

In the Windows 7 touch challenge students developed solutions with Windows Touch to expand the possibilities of how users interact with computers. The winners were:

• India Rose of France's University of Orleans finished in first place;
• Dreambender from Telkom Institute of Technology in Indonesia took second place; and
• IUVO of Japan's Senior High School at Komaba, University of Tsukuba won third place.

Team Rapture from American International University in Bangladesh won the Imagine Cup 2011 People's Choice Award and $10,000. The team created a Windows Phone 7 device called Third Eye that helps visually impaired users with a camera and a special user interface with vibration, speech feedback and voice command.

Windows Phone 7, the most commonly used technology in the competition, was featured in 48 percent of the projects. Uses included finding the nearest recycling center and helping disaster victims broadcast their location.

Windows Azure was used in 32 percent of the projects to integrate crowd-sourced and satellite data, among other uses.

Environmental issues were the focus of 24 percent of the finalist projects and 60 percent of all game design projects. Disaster relief was addressed by 23 percent of the projects, while helping people with disabilities was the goal of 22 percent of the projects.

"The innovators, entrepreneurs and humanitarians who compete in the Imagine Cup have developed an inspiring spectrum of projects, raising the bar higher and higher each year," said S. Somasegar, senior vice president of Microsoft's developer division. "We are in awe of the students' solutions for addressing social and real-world challenges, and want to help them take their projects to the next level with the financial, technical and business support they need to change the world."

More information is available at imaginecup.com.