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The Imagine Cup, Microsoft's premier student technology competition, has once again drawn the attention of young and aspiring tech enthusiasts from all over the world. With its mission to empower the next generation of creators and problem-solvers, the competition has seen an overwhelming response from students who are eager to showcase their innovative ideas, deepen their business acumen and technical learning and make a positive impact on society.
With cutting-edge Azure and AI solutions addressing societal issues, the top teams heading to the world finals have put an incredible amount of research, skilling and teamwork into their quest for excellence.
The next step for these teams will be pitching their ideas to expert judges, where they will be required to give demonstrations of their tech and engage in a question and answer session as they compete for over USD50,000 in prizing and a chance to make it to the World Championship. Projects will be judged on their innovative use of Azure technology, accessibility and inclusion, and feasibility as a business idea.
Those that make it to the final 3 will then further perfect their projects with support from Microsoft mentors until they present again in May and the winning team will take home the grand prize of USD100,000 and a mentoring session with Microsoft Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella.
In this blog, we will take a closer look at these talented teams and their groundbreaking projects that are sure to inspire and excite you.
Americas
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0m³Gym, United States Health Project: A smart, portable resistance training system that utilizes AI-coached training, real-time data tracking, resistance feedback from sensors, personalized fitness plans, and balance exercises to prevent muscle loss and imbalances due to ageing. |
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Alert Heart, United States Health Project: A wireless monitoring device to detect heart attacks and alert the caretakers. |
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Alto, United States Health Project: A browser extension that can automatically detect images and generate alt text when a page is loaded using a serverless function that calls the Azure Image description API. |
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Blindl-e, Brazil Education Project: A translator of digital texts into the braille pattern, with the aim of improving and enabling the teaching of braille and access to culture for the visually impaired. |
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Disco, Canada Education Project: Disco is a drug discovery platform that allows university-aged students to identify potential treatments for incurable diseases, by combining multiple datasets, graph traversals and quantum computing. |
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Eupnea, United States Health Project: Eupnea is the complete package that provides tuberculosis patients and health care providers with a low-cost solution to save lives and eradicate tuberculosis. |
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Fluid Data Stream, United States Education Project: FDS-Tool is a web app to help people to execute machine learning techniques such as exploratory data, preprocessing, and model building without code. |
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Hamiltonian History, United States Education Project: An immersive game-based history learning platform which gamifies K-8 classrooms by sending students back in time. Featuring a multiplayer RPG world of the United States packed with quests, political simulations, and battles spanning from 1774 to 1864. |
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Hearing loss Glasses, Brazil Health Project: Glasses created to revolutionize the lives of people with hearing impairments. With a modern design and cutting-edge technology, the glasses caption what the user is listening to, making communication much easier and more natural. |
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Naymat Khaana, United States Earth Project: A mobile app for utilization of surplus food items in households in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the wastage of resources in producing, processing, transporting and preparation of food. |
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Outset, United States Lifestyle Project: Outset is a digital wardrobe management platform. Outset’s technology automatically captures purchasing data and catalogues inventory listings which sync a user’s digital wardrobe. Users can track, view, and monetize the closets with the click of a button. |
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PAQHA, Ecuador Earth Project: A mobile application that serves as an intermediary between food producers and supermarkets for direct delivery so that producers can be treated fairly in terms of payment for products. |
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Recipeats, United States Lifestyle Project: An app designed to recommend healthy meal plans and recipes. It also offers recommendations for people who wish to eat out by listing local restaurants offering the dishes. |
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Scraft, United States Education Project: Scraft is an AI writing tutor that empowers the way students write by providing thought-provoking prompts, personalized feedback, and suggestions. |
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TIF3, United States Lifestyle Project: Aimo! is a digital daily task board that provides a space for members to interact with their community one small change at a time. The aim is to incentivize community members to help one another and improve exposure to local or volunteer events. |
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wav3, United States Lifestyle Project: Audible Motion is a real-time, two-way translation app between English and American Sign Language for people with hearing impairments. |
Asia
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AlbaCare, Singapore Lifestyle Project: A sensor-based 'ageing in place' system designed for families with an elderly relative living alone. |
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Biome'22, India Earth Project: BIOME enables unsupervised growth of organic food anywhere and anytime without any technical expertise. |
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CS-M Tool , Thailand Health Project: CS-M Tool (Cardiac Self-Monitoring Tool) is a medical device that allows anyone to get a regular heart checkup. |
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deStigma, Singapore Health Project: deStigma is an AI-powered application that aids psychiatrists in the detection of autism spectrum disorder in children. It equips psychiatrists with empirical statistics and analysis on their patients, empowering them to make data-driven decisions. |
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EN#EyeTist, Korea Lifestyle Project: EyeTist is a web service for people who have difficultly using their hand. It recognizes the user's face and allows them to draw with only facial movements. |
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The Green Tycoon, Sri Lanka Earth Project: Simplifying Carbon Accounting by offering an innovative, real-time mobile-based emission management system using the latest technologies for organizations to monitor, achieve emission goals, reduce carbon taxes, and encourage going greener. |
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LeafScope, PRC Earth Project: This project uses lightweight convolutional neural network algorithms to extract detailed features and train high-precision models to accurately identify crop diseases. Through the use of Microsoft intelligent cloud Azure cloud platform, based on the MobileNetV3 lightweight model for training, the obtained model can reach more than a 90% recognition rate. |
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Marine Pioneer, PRC Lifestyle Project: Marine Pioneer, with its simple structure and strong practicability, is a marine buoy that can break through the limitations of traditional ocean buoys and realize self-power supply by using the wave energy in the working environment. It can be used in many scenarios, such as channel lighting, marine sensing and marine measurement, and thus can become the basis for constructing a marine monitoring network. |
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MoonChick, Indonesia Earth MoonChick is a smart collaborative system for broiler livestock business using big data analytics, machine learning, and IoT technology to capture data and also low internet access for rural area. |
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naVIgaSION, Singapore Lifestyle Project: Providing technical solutions to provide equal rights to visually impaired people in order to make a real-life impact. |
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SIPSARA, Sri Lanka Education Project: A web-based application that measures and develops the skills of children with Down Syndrome in Sri Lanka. Using an e-learning system the objective of this project is to develop a reliable and efficient approach to predicting the development of children with Down syndrome. |
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SnaillyProject, Indonesia Education Project: An application that allows parents to control and monitor their children's internet activities to ensure online safety. |
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Team HIVE, Nepal Education Project: Sanchar is a technology-based solution aimed at bridging the communication gap between hearing- or speech-impaired individuals and the rest of the world, enabling individuals using sign language to have a better lifestyle. |
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Team PNP, Nepal Health Project: Smart goggles that detect their surroundings through a camera-fed AI model to inform visually impaired users. |
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visioneo, India Lifestyle Project: Netram assists visually impaired people to assist them to navigate through bustling public places like metro stations. |
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Philippines Finalist team to be announced |
EMEA
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CAi, Kenya Health |
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iBoost, Kenya Lifestyle Project: iBoost is a smart signal amplifier which leverages Azure Machine Learning, Bing Maps platform, and a host of other Microsoft technologies to bring an end to the internet connectivity and cellular network challenges brought about by poor network coverage. |
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Institution based transport system (IBTRS), Nigeria Lifestyle Project: Based on a shuttle management system, IBTRS uses a telegram bot and RFID system to book shuttles at an affordable price for institutions, students and workers and maximize efficiency. |
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Laso, UK Health Project: Laso introduces a personalized real-time risk prognosis tool assessing patients’ risk and status to assist in the event of critically ill patients deteriorating unexpectedly and requiring immediate transfers from hospital beds to intensive care units (ICUs). |
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Mimea Team, Bosnia and Herzegovina Health Project: A smart mirror made on a Raspberry PI, connected with Azure services. It offers a cost-effective smart mirror, aimed at aiding people who are suffering from dementia and Alzheimers. |
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Paramount, South Africa Earth Project: This system addresses the lack of participation in recycling through a gamification approach. Users earn points and badges for recycling and can also use the app to identify the correct bin to use. |
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RIM Energy, Kenya Earth Project: A Smart LPG regulator that improves safety, monitors consumption, detects gas leaks, alerts on refill, and measures carbon footprint to reduce GHG emissions in African households. |
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Score More, Kenya Education Project: Udhamini web app is a platform that gives students access to a centralized repository of scholarships to make opportunities easier to find and ensure that students don't miss deadlines. |
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Smart Farmer, Kenya Earth Project: Smart Farmer aims to increase agricultural production in order to help reduce food waste using technology. |
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TAWI, Kenya Education Project: Tawi is a home-based software app that helps children with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) improve their auditory skills. It includes noise cancellation, sound amplification, speech-to-text conversion, and auditory training exercises. |
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Wastestars, Kenya Earth Project: Wastestars aims to design a smart waste collection system that allows citizens to choose and post the various types of solid waste they want to dispose of on the website and for garbage collectors. |
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Pakistan Finalist team to be announced |
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Pakistan Finalist team to be announced |
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Pakistan Finalist team to be announced |
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Pakistan Finalist team to be announced |
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UAE Finalist team to be announced |
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Follow the action
Congratulations to all these incredible young developers for making it this far! Follow their journeys on Instagram and Twitter as they head to the World Finals to pitch their projects.