Firebirds grabs ‘Imagine Cup 2013’

Team ‘Firebirds’ From the Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) Wellawatte emerged victorious at the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 competition, held at the University of Colombo, School of Computing (UCSC), the co-host of the event recently. The team will be representing Sri Lanka at the Imagine Cup 2013 World Finals, scheduled to be held in St. Petersburg Russia, in July 2013.

The winning project was an application ‘I-Chum’ which, helps visually impaired people to engage in their day-to-day activities without difficulty. This device equipped with motions sensors and sonars interact with the user through pre-loaded information thus allowing easy navigation. When the sonar detects a bench it would let the user know the proximity of the bench. The project was presented under the ‘innovation’ category of the competition.

The winning team comprised of Stefan Udumalgala, Mohamed Shehan, Amal Gunathilake and Kishore Kumar Ganeshalingam. The final stage of the Imagine Cup competition was judged by an elite panel of judges comprised of Sri Lankan Airlines IT Head Chamara Perera, MAS Chief Information Officer Jehan Mutaliph, TechOne Learning Consultant Dhammika Hewapathirana, Microsoft Sri Lanka EPG Director Imran Vilcassim and Navantis IT (Pvt) Ltd PMO Manager Charaka Gunatilaka.

This year on the first round over 700 undergraduates from both public and private universities participated in this competition and Microsoft through their programs provided these students with the access to latest Microsoft tools and technologies totally free of charge.

Fourteen teams from universities and higher education institutes such as Peradeniya, Moratuwa, Wayamba, Sabaragamuwa, SLIIT and IIT participated at the finals.

The Imagine Cup local competition was started in Sri Lanka by Microsoft in 2005 and more than 8,000 local students, since inception, have taken part in the competition.