UCL Hosts Imagine Cup UK National Finals

UCL Computer Science recently played host to the UK National Finals of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition. The world’s premier technology competition is open to students from across the country, and UCL was honoured to host the UK national final. The twelve best teams of student came together to pitch their product ideas to a panel of experts in a bid to win a place in the World Finals in Seattle, as well as a $50,000 prize. UCL was well represented with three teams in the final twelve; hard drive developers Cloudette, wireless filesharers Nearshare, and gamers BoltPushRush.

UCL Computer Science student and Nearshare developer Kelvin Khoo, said:

“Being involved in the Imagine Cup finals proved that there is great potential in our application. More importantly it gave us the opportunity to gain professional feedback from the judges in both the technical and business side so that we can further improve our application and bring it to market.”

Manoj Vaseekharan, of Cloudette said:

“Competing in the Imagine Cup finals was a great experience. The effort we put into the project throughout the past several months certainly paid off and we were very happy to show the public our work. Cloudette was well received and we were very proud to represent UCL Computer Science. Although we did not win, the feedback was invaluable and the team will continue to refine and develop what we think is a product that everyone will want to own!”

Dr Dean Mohamedally, Senior Teaching Fellow at the UCL Software Systems Engineering Group, was involved in helping the students develop their ideas. He said:

“We were delighted that three UCL Computer Science teams made it to the UK Finals – placing our students among the brightest and best engineers in the country – and it has provided an opportunity for all students that enter to kickstart their programming career, and get support and expertise from key industry members.”

Congratulations to eventual winners Team Ripple from Exeter University who now go on to the world finals in Seattle.