EMC Middle East has announced the launch of the annual EMC Graduate Project Competition for the MEA Titled "Envision the Future" and sponsored by the EMC’s Egyptian Centre of Excellence (COE), the competition is being judged by a panel of 10 esteemed industry leaders and academicians from across the globe.

The competition, which was open to senior undergraduate students from universities in Turkey and the MEA enrolled in the EMC academic alliance program is aimed at sparking innovation and creativity in IT education.

The EMC Graduate Project Competition was divided into five stages, kicking off with project abstract submission on Oct. 15, and has since witnessed over 65 projects from 272 participating students from across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Kenya. 40 percent of these entries were submitted by young women from across these countries.

Now, in the semifinal stage, 30 projects have been shortlisted based on project abstract submissions that were created using only open source tools in areas related to cloud and social networking apps, multi-clouds and hybrid cloud, software defined data center and networks, technology for big data apps and domain-specific big data applications.

Mohammed Amin, senior vice president, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa and Middle East (TEEAM) at EMC Corporation, said: “We are excited to announce this unique platform that not only seeks to encourage creativity and innovation but allows students to leverage all that they have learnt under the EMC Academic Alliance umbrella. As the region continues to witness the accelerated adoption of third platform technologies, we believe it is our responsibility as a leader in innovation to share the skills, knowledge and best practices that the next generation of IT leaders would require.”