The two-member team from American University of Sharjah (AUS), Ammar Sawas and Ahmed Wasfy, has won the Microsoft Gulf’s Imagine Cup 2008.

The winners were declared after an intense competition amongst finalists from UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

The winners were awarded with a cash prize and a ticket to participate at the global finals to be held in Paris, France, from July 3 to 8.

Microsoft’s annual student event has received widespread popularity with over 1,330 student registrations coming in from the Gulf from over 30 universities wanting to compete in this year’s event.

Of the 32 proposals that were accepted, a total of just six projects were shortlisted to participate in the finals. The Imagine Cup, Microsoft’s premier competition for technology students, provides a forum to encourage creative and technological innovations among university students worldwide.

This year students took on the important challenge of “imagining a world where technology enables a sustainable environment.”

The AUS team developed a project titled ‘PolluMap’ which is an automatic pollution mapping system to track city pollution levels. It collects pollution data entries automatically across a geographical zone to provide a database on pollution levels in a short time frame.

It also gives the user the ability to view the pollution levels as well as the predicted values that are derived from the current patterns of pollution trends.  The results can also be viewed on a virtual city map, using Microsoft Virtual Earth, with different areas shaded in different colors depending on the levels of pollution.

"I am very proud of our students," said team’s mentor and an AUS professor Dr Fadi Aloul. "They have demonstrated that their talent and passion for technology can produce solutions that can make a difference to the world.”

At the global finals, students have a chance to win over $180,000 across nine categories.

Six teams participated in the Gulf finals – three from UAE; one each from Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait. Each team had 20 minutes to present their work to a panel of judges comprising of senior members from the enterprise and government sectors.

This year’s event was supported by the Information Technology Authority (ITA), Oman, eGovernment Bahrain, Kuwait University and Dubai Municipality. – TradeArabia News Service