Prince Raad commends Jordanian Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011 winners

His Royal Highness Prince Raad bin Zeid, President of the Higher Council for Affairs of Persons with Disabilities (HCD), yesterday, commended the Jordanian winners, Oasys, on their third-place-win among 350,000 competitors in the global 2011 Microsoft Imagine Cup competition, which was held in New York. “What you have achieved is truly remarkable! Your innovation and talent could be utilised to assist us in our mission towards inclusive education,” His Highness told the four-member team, during a meeting at HCD’s headquarters. The Jordanian team took home third place in the Software Design competition for creating an affordable system that allows people with quadriplegia to control a computer, move a mouse, and type using an infrared device and a Wii-mote. This state-of-the-art system was created by Mohammad Azzam, Monir Abu-Hilal, Hani Abu-Huwaij, and mentor Mohammad Saleh, all of whom are students from the German Jordanian University, Petra University and Princess Sumaya University of Technology (PSUT), respectively. Hani, stated, “On behalf of my team members, I would like to thank HRH Prince Raad for his support and for taking the time to sit with the team so we can better explain our project and its future. The support of HRH means a lot to each and every Oasys team member.” He added, “It feels great to win third place in the Imagine Cup. People were surprised to see Jordan in the top three, ahead of many industrial and advanced countries in Europe and Asia. We are glad to have raised the bar for Jordan, the Arab world and the Middle East and Africa region. We hope to always see the Jordanian team winning and getting great results in the imagine cup and all competitions.”Jordanian team winning and getting great results in the imagine cup and all competitions.” During the meeting, which was attended by HCD’s Secretary-General, Dr. Amal Nahhas, as well as other relevant members of staff, the four-member team performed a real-life demonstration of the system, showing how it was developed, as well as highlighting issues that need to be enhanced in the future. For his part, the prince underscored HCD’s support for the project, highlighting the organisation’s willingness to serve as a liaison between the team and potential investors who will hopefully enable the project to reach a wider range of people with disabilities in need. Walid Abu-Hadba, Corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) Group, stated, “Our goal at Microsoft is to help create a world-class IT Industry in Jordan, and we believe that to achieve that goal we have to start by supporting our students to design and create world-class projects.” Oasys team designed and created an innovative software that unleashes the power of technology to benefit the society, and the team raised the bar at Imagine Cup Worldwide competition this year by connecting and visiting with a local hospital in New York to allow the doctors and patients to test out their system. This year’s Imagine Cup competition included nine tracks with Software Design as the main one. Other tracks were Embedded Development, Game Design, Digital Media, Windows Phone 7, Interoperability Challenge, IT Challenge, Orchard Challenge, and Windows 7 Touch Challenge. The Imagine Cup and its tracks encourage all programmers, designers, and technologists to rise to the challenges that the United Nations has identified, such as reducing poverty and providing universal primary education for all, and use the United Nations Millennium Development Goals as their inspiration, amongst other issues. Competitors must successfully pass through multiple rounds prior to reaching the finals. Each country holds a competition round for the software track. In Jordan, approximately 377 students from 16 universities participated in the Imagine Cup Jordan for the software design track with Oasys winning the local finals back in April 2011. All Imagine Cup competitors received 240 hours of technical training at the Microsoft Innovation Center, in addition to access to free software programs from an extended list of 83 Microsoft software titles and software design technologies that they used while creating their projects, and exclusive learning resources through the Microsoft IT Academy Program. At Imagine Cup 2011, Microsoft Corp unveiled plans to launch a three-year, $3 million competitive grant program to help the recipients of Imagine Cup take their projects to the next level with the financial, technical and business support they need to change the world. Imagine Cup teams will be eligible to apply for grants that include a combination of cash, software, training, consulting and other support. The Imagine Cup 2012 Worldwide Finals will be held in Sydney, Australia, in July 2012. Students can register today for Imagine Cup 2012 and soon they will be able to choose to sign-up and create technological advancements in any of the different Imagine Cup 2012 Competition categories.