Supreeth wins India leg of Microsoft Imagine Cup 2010; will travel for global finals in July. Supreeth S, a student of the SSN College of Engineering Chennai, has been declared the winner at the India finals of Microsoft’s annual Imagine Cup technology competition for school and college students. But on Friday when the result was announced in Bangalore, Supreeth was not around to receive his award from former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair – he had to go back to Chennai a day earlier, to take some examinations.
Challenged to ‘imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today’, Supreeth came up with a collaborative learning solution where education and entertainment is seamlessly morphed – and accessed multiple input mouse devices all sharing a personal computer. “This is a dream come true for me. I hope to make the country proud at the Imagine Cup world finals in Poland”, Supreeth said.
Team RSS from VES Institute of Technology, Mumbai and Team Inferno from the University College of Engineering, Punjabi University, were judged as the first and second runners-up, for their local medical assistance tool and their educational software package, respectively.
Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft India, said, “The participants this year came up with path-breaking innovative technological solutions to help solve world’s toughest problem. This is truly a celebration of great minds producing great work. The winning technological solution aims at simplifying the educational content by converting it into exciting computer games which is reflective of innovative thoughts, minds and action. We are hopeful that the team from India will do us proud at the Imagine Cup world finals in Poland.”
Dr B K Shukla, Scientist G, National Technology and Entrepreneurship Board, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, joined Dr Madhavan Nair in giving away the prizes. He pointed out that the NTEB was the only government entity that supported individual innovators rather than institutions with grants and awards.
The Imagine Cup has been sponsored by Microsoft since 2003, to unleash the creative talents of young people, setting them a new technology challenge every year. The key competition is for the software design award, where the top three Indian contenders get Rs 80,000, Rs 70,000 and Rs 60,000. The India winner travels for the worldwide finals which take place in Warsaw, Poland from July 3rd to July 8th, where the prizes are US$ 25,000 for the winner and $ 10,000 and $ 5000 for the two runners up. In recent years the completion has been enlarged with new categories like embedded design, game development, digital media and IT challenge, with smaller prizes.
More information at http://www.imaginecup.com
Bangalore April 30 2010