Join us watch the final show down of Imagine Cup 2019. Three teams representing Asia, Europe Middle East and Africa and the Americas regions will compete for the grand prize. Taking home USD100K and a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella.
This year, Imagine Cup 2019 World Championship student developer team finalist will present their ideas at Microsoft Build. Yes, Imagine Cup finals is taking place at Microsoft’s 2019 Build developer conference. The finals will take place before Build 2019 keynotes begin. Event will be live at 8:00AM PT, 3:00PM GMT (4:00PM UK), 6:00PM EAT and 5:00PM SAT.
Watch 2019 World Championship Live
About the Teams
The three regional finalists are;
Asia Winner: Team Caeli, from Manav Rachna Institute of Research & Studies, India
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.
