Meet your 2017 Imagine Cup champions – Team X.GLU of the Czech Republic!

By Anthony Salcito, Vice President of Worldwide Education, Microsoft, and Charlotte Yarkoni, Corporate Vice President, Growth + Ecosystems, Microsoft

At its core, Imagine Cup is all about empowering today’s brightest young minds to create the world of tomorrow through technology and teamwork. Since its inception 15 years ago, Imagine Cup has inspired nearly 2 million students from all over the world to bring their biggest, boldest ideas to life.

Today, we are excited to announce Team X.GLU of the Czech Republic as the 2017 Imagine Cup champions. X.GLU’s project is a combination hardware and Microsoft Azure cloud solution designed to help people with diabetes better cope with the disease’s symptoms. As the victors, X.GLU wins a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, $100,000 in cash, a $125,000 Azure Grant and a trip to the 2018 Build developer conference.

Second place went to Team Oculogx of the United States, which built a mixed reality app that uses HoloLens and Microsoft Azure to improve the process and experience for locating items in large warehouses. Third place went to Team Nash of Argentina for its project, RESCUE, a Microsoft Azure-powered platform that uses drones to reduce response times during natural disasters. Finally, fourth place went to Team NeuroGate of Canada, which created a solution that uses Microsoft Kinect motion data and machine learning to analyze gait patterns and diagnose potential neurodegenerative diseases.

The road to the World Finals was taken by tens of thousands of students with an idea on how to change the world using code. They then spent months developing their solutions, go-to-market plans and competing in National Finals across the globe. Then 54 teams from 39 countries were selected to compete in the World Finals.

The projects featured in the World Finals spanned leading-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, virtual / augmented reality, the Internet of Things and the cloud. The teams represented some of the best computer science schools in the world, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Oxford University, Tokyo University and the University of Toronto.

Over the course of two days, the 54 finalist teams competed head to head until the field was narrowed to the final four that would compete to be the next Imagine Cup champion.

The final teams competed in front of three tech titan judges from across academia, Microsoft and the broader technology industry, including Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant, Harvard University computer science professor Dr. David Malan and Microsoft’s own Mark Russinovich, a Microsoft Technical Fellow and the chief technology officer for Azure. Microsoft Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise Scott Guthrie hosted the Championship Show and announced the winner.

The competition was hard fought to the end. If you haven’t had a chance, be sure to view the Championship Show video above to see some of the best student developers in the world deliver their ideas for the technologies of tomorrow with passion and enthusiasm.

On behalf of Microsoft, we’d like to congratulate our new Imagine Cup champion, Team X.GLU, and all of the students who worked so hard to make this 15th anniversary Imagine Cup the most thrilling one yet.

— Anthony & Charlotte

 

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