“The innovators, entrepreneurs and humanitarians who compete in the Imagine Cup have developed an inspiring spectrum of projects, raising the bar higher and higher each year,” said S. Somasegar, senior vice president, Developer Division, Microsoft. “We are in awe of the students’ solutions for addressing social and real-world challenges, and want to help them take their projects to the next level with the financial, technical and business support they need to change the world.”
To do that, Microsoft will be launching a three-year, $3 million competitive grant program to assist Imagine Cup recipients in realizing their vision of solving the world’s toughest problems. Imagine Cup finalists will be eligible to apply for grants that include a combination of cash, software, training, consulting and other support. Microsoft will announce details about the grant program and application process later this summer.
There were more than 350,000 global registrants for the 2011 Microsoft Imagine Cup. The registrants created projects in five competition categories and four challenges with a total of $215,000 divided among all the winners. Student technology projects competing in the Imagine Cup are frequently inspired by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. This year teams focused heavily on environmental concerns, with 24 percent of worldwide finalist projects and 60 percent of all Game Design projects shedding light on environmental issues. Taking a cue from recent world events, natural disaster relief was another common theme: 23 percent of projects addressed varying aspects of disaster relief. Inspired by improvements in mobile technology and accessibility features such as speech recognition, more teams than ever (22 percent) developed projects that would enhance the lives of people with disabilities.
For the 2012 Imagine Cup, students are once again being asked to, “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems,” but they will also be encouraged through the Solve This program to find technology solutions for issues submitted by IGOs, NGOs and non-profit organizations worldwide. Competitions for 2012 will launch before September 2011. High School or college students are welcome to register for the competitions and mentors are also needed. Registration for both is open through www.imaginecup.com.
