Previous |
Next |
June 29, 2006, 01:23 PM ET
Wednesdays With Bill
Almost any computer-science student would be nervous if he knew he’d have to show his work to Bill Gates. But for the young programmers who converged on Redmond, Washington this week to do just that, there was added reason for anxiety: A $25,000 prize was riding on their presentations.
The students were from seven college teams that have emerged as finalists in the software-design portion of this year’s Imagine Cup, an annual competition that Microsoft holds to recruit young talent. This year the company asked contestants to use Windows—no Linux or Macs allowed, of course—in a project that could improve the quality of health care, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Teams that rose to the challenge included a group from Virginia Commonwealth University, which designed a system that lets doctors put medication reminders and medical information on patients’ mobile devices. Other entries came from students at Brazil’s Pernambuco State University—whose team developed a “virtual eye” that can help vision-impaired people find specific points in a city—and the United Kingdom’s University of Hull—who devised a bedside computer for patients recovering from critical illnesses. The winner of the competition will be announced in August. —Brock Read
Categories: Research, Student-Life
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.