DIT beats 155 universities to world tech final


21 Jun 2007

In its first year entering the Imagine Cup Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), representing Ireland, has made it through to the last five, the only European country to do so.

The Microsoft- and BT-sponsored student technology competition, which has been running for the past six years, had entries from 160 universities and colleges around the world and Ireland is now down to the last five.

The DIT team, RedDawn, consists of Mohammed Altahs and Marouf Azad, final year computer science students.

The students made it to the finals with an online software development environment that they created for programming languages Visual Basic and C++.

The environment is designed with Web 2.0 functionality and is collaborative, so software developers can compile code, manage projects and share information with other users.

In August the DIT team will be traveling to Korea to compete with the four other finalists from Singapore, France, Mexico and Beijing.

This year saw the highest ever number of students entering the Imagine Cup, with over 100,00 entrants from over 100 countries around the globe.

The overall prize awarded to the winner in August will be US$8,000. However, six finalists from last year’s Imagine Cup were chosen for entrepreneurial possibilities and business and technology training was awarded as part of the Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator program.

By Marie Boran