Firebirds win Imagine Cup 2013

Team 'Firebirds' from the Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) in 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 this year.

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, i.e- 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 Chamara Perera, Head of IT of Sri Lankan Airlines, Jehan Mutaliph, Chief Information Officer of MAS, Dhammika Hewapathirana, Consultant, TechOne Learning (Pvt) Ltd., Imran Vilcassim, Director EPG of Microsoft Sri Lanka and Charaka Gunatilaka, Manager, PMO, Navantis IT (Pvt) Ltd.

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 competed at the finals and they were from Peradeniya, Moratuwa, Wayamba, Sabaragamuwa, SLIIT and IIT universities and higher education institutes.

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.