Innovative projects are rewarded

THREE teams will be representing the kingdom on home soil in the regional final of the 2015 Microsoft Imagine Cup.

Team Vanguards won the Games grouping, Team Storm took the Innovation prize place and Team MyVoice walked away with the World Citizenship section.

More than 100 students participated in this year’s round of Imagine Cup in Bahrain and 46 team projects were received, representing most of the higher education institutions in the country. Nine teams qualified for the recently-staged local finals.

The Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB), Tamkeen, Microsoft and eGovernment Authority joined forces to promote the annual competition that celebrates innovation.

“We congratulate the winning teams and all the participants,” said Sherif Tawfik, regional country manager for Microsoft in Bahrain and Oman. “This year’s round of Imagine Cup in Bahrain received a number of remarkable projects in which the students have demonstrated high levels of maturity and creativity; they really impressed us.”

The Conscious Heart project by the Vanguards Team of Mahmoud Saeed and Nouf Abdullah, representing Bahrain Polytechnic, is a horror game that immerses players in an experience using virtual reality and biofeedback technologies. It is a game that undergoes changes according to the player’s heartbeat.

The SCatcher project by Storm Team made up of the University of Bahrain’s Saira Rashed, Ahmed Abdul Majeed and Sehrish Riaz, is a windows phone application that allows users to find images in their phones’ photo gallery by simply drawing a sketch of the wanted picture to use it as a search object.

And, the EasyCom project by MyVoice Team featuring AMA International’s Adnan Adil, Omar Adil, Nadeem Mohammed and Mohamed Abdul Bari, aims to help in completely revolutionising the way mute people communicate by creating a seamless way of communication between people who cannot speak and others.

In Bahrain, student teams competing in the final rounds were judged by a panel of experienced industry leaders and entrepreneurs, including Dr Abdulla Al Sada, senior manager – design and projects development, Tamkeen, Dr Khalid Ahmed Almutawah, director of enterprise architecture and IT services, eGovernment Authority, Ahmed Hujairi, chairman of Gulf Future Business and a board member of Batelco and Hamad Al Saei, public sector and education manager, Microsoft Bahrain.

All three teams said they were ‘thrilled’ to have the chance of participating in the Pan-Arab Finals taking place in Bahrain between May 31 and June 3 under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander, First Deputy Premier and Chairman of the EDB.

They will compete against more than 30 Arab teams for the chance to represent the region at the Worldwide Finals taking place in the US city of Seattle in late July.

Cheering the winning teams, Tamkeen’s chairman and acting chief executive, Shaikh Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa, said: “This year’s projects and ideas revealed the skills and abilities of Bahrain’s youth in ICT; we are really optimistic about the future generation of local entrepreneurs.”