Under the auspices of HE Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt is set to host the World Imagine Cup finals on July 3 to 7. A Microsoft Corporation competition, the event will be held in Cairo with 300,000 young men and women from 120 countries participating.
The competition seeks to spread the Cyber-Peace Culture by inspiring students to use their creativity to help change the world for the better through discovering new ways to use technology to address some of the world's toughest challenges.
Each year, the organizers choose one of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals as a theme. These include:
- Eradicating extreme hunger and poverty;
- Achieving universal primary education;
- Promoting gender equality and empowering women;
- Reducing child mortality;
- Improving maternal health;
- Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
- Ensuring environmental sustainability; and
- Developing a global partnership for development.
Competition categories include:
- Software design;
- Embedded development;
- Game development;
- Robotics and algorithm;
- IT challenge;
- Mash up;
- Photography;
- Short film; and
- Design.
The winners take home a total of US$240,000 worth of prizes.
As the world's premier student technology competition, the Imagine Cup is one way Microsoft is encouraging young people to apply their imagination, their passion, and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world. Now in its seventh year, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a truly global competition focused on finding solutions to global issues. More than 200,000 students from over 100 countries entered the 2008 competition. The theme of Imagine Cup 2009 is "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the world's toughest problems."
The Imagine Cup was founded in 2003. Worldwide Finals host countries have spanned the globe from Spain, to Brazil, to Japan, to India, to South Korea, and last year, to France. |