Today Microsoft narrowed down the field of 22 Software Design and Game Design finalists to just 12 teams that are still in the running to take home a trophy at the Imagine Cup 2011 U.S. Finals event, taking place this weekend.
The remaining finalists will have the chance present their world-changing software solutions and games to the judges tomorrow morning at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The winning Software Design team will go on to represent the U.S. at the Worldwide Imagine Cup Finals in New York City in July.
Software Design Finalists
Tonight we narrowed down the field of 10 Software Design teams to four teams.
Team Lifelens
Schools: UCLA Anderson School of Management, Harvard Business School, University of Central Florida, University of California, Davis
Project: Project LifeLens strives to reduce mortality rates throughout the world by using an innovative point-of-care smartphone app to diagnose malaria. Using Windows Phone 7 and a special microscopic lens, LifeLens can diagnose malaria in the field, significantly boosting the accuracy of the diagnosis as compared to tests used today. More accurate testing can help ensure treatment is provided to the people who truly need it, which may help to reduce the more than 1 million deaths due to malaria each year.
Team Note-Taker
School: Arizona State University
Project: Note-Taker is an assistive technology to help low-vision and legally blind students take notes in class as quickly and effectively as their fully sighted peers. The project combines a portable, custom-designed camera and a touch-screen tablet PC to allow the user to simultaneously view live video and take typed or hand-written notes on a split-screen interface. The Note-Taker project was inspired by one of the team’s legally blind members, David Hayden, who was unable to keep up with note-taking in blackboard-intensive math courses.
Team TTHV
Schools: Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Central Connecticut State University
Project: Remindavax is a solution targeted at improving patient attendance for recommended maternal and child healthcare, as well as helping community health workers organize and prioritize their village visits to ensure patients who cannot access the health centers get needed care. Remindavax utilizes a web application and Windows Phone 7 application.
Team Uca Ursus
School: University of Central Arkansas
Project: Team Uca Ursus’s project focuses on a skin cancer diagnostic application that will allow people to self-monitor the diagnosed skin lesion using their cell phones. The solution automatically will add new images to the database, compare new images with the previous ones, detect and determine the change in the region of interest, and, depending on the changes, send a warning message and a summary report to the diagnostician
Game Design - Windows/Xbox
The group of six Game Design (Windows/Xbox) teams was narrowed down to four teams tonight.
Team Bloom
School: Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy
Project: Team Bloom developed Spero, a game focused on making a difference one step at a time. Players help find alternative energy solutions, keep the environment clean and educate people on how to live healthier lives.
Team Plump Pixel
School: California State University, Chico
Project: Green World is an educational game with real-time strategy, where players take on the role of city planners, whose responsibility is to provide a sustainable level of energy to their city while keeping the environment clean.
Team Righteous Noodle
School: University of Houston
Project: Eva Frontier is a real-time strategy game that challenges players to end poverty through the use of advanced technologies by delivering food and medicine to villages following a natural disaster.
Team XozGaming
School: Lick-Wilmerding High School
Project: In Strain, players take on the role of the leader of the World Health Organization. With the help of advisors, it is up to the player to save the world from a worldwide epidemic. With a limited budget, the player is responsible for developing a treatment, vaccine, and cure, and strategically supplying them in order to minimize the death toll.
Game Design - Mobile
The group of six Game Design (Mobile) teams was narrowed down to four teams tonight.
Team AAMP
School: University of Houston
Project: Operation Clean Sweep is intended to raise game players’ awareness of water pollution, while serving as an agent with the Environmental Protection Agency tasked with cleaning up contaminated rivers.
Team Big Impact Bear
School: University of Houston
Project: Forest Gun takes a proactive approach to ending deforestation, aiming to prevent clear-cutting and reverse its effects. The team was inspired by the Ents from Lord of the Rings, protectors of the trees who were outraged by widespread felling.
Team EDO
School: Arizona State University
Project: Word Mine is an educational word game for Windows Phone 7. The game focuses on fast word recognition for a variety of languages. The goal is to assist players in learning new words in a fun and engaging way.
Team Mintrus
Schools: University of Louisville, Columbia College Chicago
Project: Pandemic is a tower defense game that acts as a conduit in the education and prevention of AIDS. Players of Pandemic are submerged into the human body, where they assume the role of the immune system in a battle against AIDS.
Congratulations to all of the finalist teams who are participating this weekend! Brandon Liu from Team TTHV sums up his experience this weekend: “It has been really inspirational getting feedback from a community of people who care about social change and have a similar vision.”
Be sure to follow @MSTechStudent and follow the #ICUS hashtag on Twitter to get the latest updates on tomorrow’s activities and the announcement of the winners.
