Tunisia team Athena-IO, wins USD 5000 and Microsoft Azure Grant as Second place winners.
Team Athena-IO came in second place in the just ended Europe Middle East and Africa regional final championship qualifying round. They won 5,000 USD and Microsoft Azure Grant as their prize. They unfortunately couldn’t pick a spot at the world championship as the style of the competition is different this year.
Athena-IO’s idea is a cross-platform solution enabling content creation and visualization on Mixed Reality devices such as the HoloLens. To help corporations train their workforce and make technology more accessible to everyone.
Team iCropal, Kenya present to judges
Three teams; EKKO, Pakistan, Athena-IO, Tunisia and iCropal, Kenya joined 9 others from Europe as 12 EMEA Regional Finalist. This means no team gets to represent Africa and the Middle East in the world championship this year.
The Journey to the World Finals
This year there will be three Regional Finals hosted at Microsoft Ignite The Tour events. The Asia, EMEA and Americas regional finals with winners meeting in May for the world finals. World Finals winners will recieve USD100,000 Microsoft Azure Grant and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
“We understand that today’s students are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. They will also become technology decision makes. Whatever we can do to help make them better for tomorrow, we want to invest in that” – Jennifer Ritzinger, our Senior Director of Academic Ecosystems.
The Imagine Cup 2019 EMEA Regional Final was hosted at the Amsterdam Microsoft Ignite The Tour event. Giving finalists the opportunity to pitch their ideas to event attendees during its welcome reception. The student developers received feedback for their ideas. One team was selected by the Ignite tour attendees as the People’s Choice Award recepient.
Microsoft says hosting the regional finals at The Ignite Tour will help student developers learn how to take their projects to the next level and integrate the latest and greatest technologies into their solutions.
Microsoft’s Imagine Cup has a mission to empower student developers to achieve more and create the next great technology solutions. With students also getting the chance to win cash, prizes, mentoring and travel in the process.
“We believe that with student innovation and creativity, partnered with Microsoft technologies and Azure cloud resources, the possibilities are endless”.
Each year Microsoft hosts its student Imagine Cup competition. A competition where student developers showcase their innovative solutions built on Microsoft’s technology. Starting with online finals, national and regional finals. Then on to the world finals with winner of the competition being awarded a grand prize package of about 100,000$.
This year’s EMEA online semifinal competition as usual received hundreds of submissions. With only 12 teams moving on to the next stage. Only two teams, iCropal and Athena-IO from Kenya and Tunisia respectively qualified from Africa to present at the online finals. They will present their innovate ideas for a chance to win the first place price of 15,000 $. And qualification to the world finals championship.
Team iCropal is made up of 3 Kabarak University students. Emmanuel Okumu a Cyber Security and Forensic student, Ian Kamau and AbdhiHakim Hussein Computer Sceince students.
The teams solution looks to hep farmers know and understand the diseases attacking their crops or farm animals. Using Microsoft’s cognitive AI services and Augmented reality technology.
An overview of team iCropal’s project
Agriculture is the major sector that contribute to the economy of the country. Yet, many farmers are going under difficult conditions majorly on diseases affecting their farms. This causes huge loss to the farmers and organizations. The rate at which diseases affect is inversely proportional to the food production.
Augmented Reality brings farmers into a visual room where a farmer interacts with a holographic bot Cortana. As a virtual veterinarian assistant that brings possible infected cow hologram in front of the user (farmer). Explains about the disease, possible source and also predict the possible solution to the disease affecting the cattle based on the users’ enquiries in the augmented reality application.
Farmers can now have a reality experience of a dairy cattle diseases and how to go about in mitigation ways of finding the best solution to a certain disease.
Also, the crop farmers can use our app extension module to upload or capture image from the vegetables, crops or some fruit section affected with a certain disease and the app will perform analysis through computer vision to recognize the possible problems affecting them.
Not all about that, it will pull possible solutions and uses GPS tracker to send the reports to the data centre where from this point, it will use Machine learning process to show the possible spread of the diseases through the Bing maps visually or running models as data, drugs with high demand, highest infected areas, the fall or raise of market profits and also the organization or government strategies that can help them to enforce proper strategies suggested to help farmers in such situations.
Congratulations to team iCropal and we will bring you an update after the finals in March.
Register to participate in the 2019 Imagine Cup EMEA Online Regional Semifinals for a chance to qualify to the world finals.
Do you have an idea that solves a problem? Can your idea use Microsoft’s Azure technology to solve the problem? Register to participate in Microsoft’s 2019 Imagine Cup competition. The cup competition is opened to students at any qualified academic institution aged 16 and above.
The Imagine Cup competition is about innovations changing the way we live. It is about solutions and applications that save lives. The competition provides a platform for student teams across the globe to showcase the technology ideas they create. How those technologies can not only shape their futures, but directly improve the lives of users.
2018 Imagine Cup World Finals
There are two ways to qualify for the Imagine Cup World Finals held each year. Either through the local national finals in your country or through the Online Finals.
The 2019 Imagine Cup: EMEA Regional Online Finals is opened to student teams from Europe (Western, Central and Eastern), Middle East, and Africa countries.
Submit an original idea entry by 02:59:59 GMT +0 on Wednessday 16th January for a chance to qualify to the world finals. A chance to win USD 15000 + a spot in the world championship, USD 5000 or USD 1000.
Selected Online Regional Finalist will be announced in March 2019 for the online finals.
Team SmartARM emerge winners in the 2018 Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition.
The 2018 edition of the Microsoft student developer championship has a winner, Team SmartARM. Team SmartARM, is made up of students from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada. The team won the 2018 championship with their smartARM idea. A robotic hand prosthetic idea, it works using using Microsoft’ Azure Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Cloud Storage technologies. The robotic hand uses a camera embedded in its palm to recognize objects and calculate the most appropriate grip for an object. Using Machine Learning, the more the model is used the more accurate it becomes.
The Microsoft Imagine Cup is a global competition that empowers the next generation of computer science students. Students team up and use their creativity, passion and knowledge of technology to create innovative solutions with the potential to solve real world problems.
The teams prize package include a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, $85,000 in cash and a $50,000 Azure grant.
This years competition saw Team Fe Amaan from the Middle East Africa region qualify to the semi-finals stage. Unfortunately they didn’t make it to the last three for a chance to present in the finals.
We bring you highlights and pictures from the various days of the Microsoft imagine Cup 2018 championship.
Students Arrive in Seattle, Washington
Imagine Cup 2018 Competition Day 1 | Tech Showcase round
Imagine Cup 2018 Competition Day 2 | Wild Card | Semi-Finals
Student developer, why don’t you get your imagination up and running on what you can solve around you to showcase in 2019. We will let you know when you can start applying to participate.
Microsoft Middle East and Africa finalist Team Fe Amaan qualify for the Imagine Cup Semi-finals.
Three teams from the Microsoft Middle East and Africa cluster qualified for this years Imagine Cup competition. The student developer competition unearths new innovations seeking to solve some of the worlds problems using Microsoft’s technologies.
This year Team Beach Safer, Egypt was the only qualifying team from Africa. The other finalist were Team Proland, Turkey and Team Fe Amaan, Pakistan. The regional finals consisted of teams from Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. With these three coming out as regional finalist based on their innovation capacity, technology level, feasibility and concept.
This years Imagine Cup World Finals has 49 teams from across the nations competing for the ultimate prize. Team Fe Amaan were the only team from the Middle East and Africa teams to make it out of the Tech Showcase stage. They now have a chance to present and show their innovation in the semi-final round.
About Team Fe Amaan
The teams innovation centers around Preventing miscarriages with data analytics using a wearable fetal health monitoring system. Developed by 3 final year computer science students of the National University of Sciences and Technology, SEECS, Pakistan.
The wearable kit consists of a belt and mobile application. An IoT model equipped with sensors connected to a handheld application and integrated with Azure databases.
“Fe Amaan provides remote and automated analysis of fetal health on a regular basis without harm to the mother or fetus. When there are anomalies in heart rates or movement patterns, the system generates alerts, enabling timely precautionary measures,” explains the team. “Our aim is that this assistive technology will help reduce the chances of having intrauterine deaths and still births all over Pakistan.”
I would have said we hope they qualify for the next stage of the competition. But unfortunately they didn’t qualify to the present at the World Finals taking place tomorrow. Out of a group of six other innovative teams competing under the artificial intelligence category.
Better luck to the Microsoft Middle East and Africa region Finalists who have learned and become better with their pitches. Collected a lot of feedback from judges along the way. How can we get an Middle East & Africa team to win the World Finals? Let’s hear what you think?
Team Beach Safer will be the only team from Africa presenting at the 2018 Imagine Cup World Finals
The annual student developer championship, Imagine Cup world finals is here with us. Students from across the nations will have an opportunity to showcase their live changing innovations. They have qualified from the various national and regional finals and stand a chance of winning this years prize package. A prize value of $700,000 comprising of cash, travel, Azure credits and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Team Beach Safer emerged winners from the teams that qualified to compete in the Middle East and Africa regional finals. Team Beach Safer comprises of computer engineering students from the University of Cairo, Egypt.
The Beach Safer project seeks to make sea swimming much safer by eliminating the danger of drowning. It comes as a smart integrated IoT solution providing interactive real-time monitoring and supervision dashboard on swimmers’ state and location through lifeguard mobile app and smart wearable devices worn by swimmers, Quick accurate drowning detection technique using biometrics and then finally an immediate automated rescue procedure using a portable flotation device and an autonomous drone carrying a buoy. It also provides the individual with a web portal for data management and a BI insights dashboard. The team leverages on Microsoft’s Azure platform, Azure IoT hub, Stream analytics job, Power BI and other technologies.
The finalists from the Middle East and Africa regions haven’t been very lucky in recent years at the finals. It will be nice to see team Beach Safer make it to the final stage of this years competition.
Join us on from the 23rd – 25th July, 4pm GMT as we share updates and stream live the Imagine Cup World Finals championship.
