Microsoft has announced the winners of the Imagine Cup 2008 international student technology competition. All in all, more than 200,000 students from over 100 countries and regions participated in the challenge.
Australia's Team SOAK, which included David Burela, Dimaz Pramudya, Ed Hooper, and Long Zheng, won the worldwide Software Design invitational, Singapore's Team Trail Blazers, which included Pinto James Dominic, Shi Ben Yong, Hu Shuhan, and Denver Lim, won the Embedded Development invitational, and Brazil's Mother Gaia Studio, which included Guilherme Campos, Helena Van Kampen, Rafael F. Costa, abd Tulio Soria, won the Game Development challenge. The software design, embedded development, and game development finalist teams created applications, devices and games using the Microsoft platform and Microsoft tools based on the Imagine Cup competition theme "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment."
In other categories, Roman Koshlyak from the Ukraine won first place in the Algorithm division, Russia's Team Red Devils, which included Ilya Grebnov and Sergei Grebnov, won the Programming Battle, France's Jean-Benoit Paux won the IT Challenge, and David Roedl and William Odom of Team UI Eco Vis from the United States won first place in the Interface Design category.
"Imagine Cup provides a forum for students around the world to explore new ways to use the power of software to help address some of the world's toughest challenges," said S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. "The high caliber of the students and their projects is evidence of the high level of innovation seen in the student community today, with a clear potential for real-world impact."
Imagine Cup 2009 will be held in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt. The theme will be "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today." Students will be asked to create software solutions that are aligned to one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight MDGs range from halving extreme poverty and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS to providing universal primary education.
