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February 16, 2004,
Vol. 74, No. 5S
EECS student tries to promote Microsoft Imagine Cup competition on campus Anil Dhawan’s
volunteer job as a student consultant on behalf of Microsoft has been
a challenge. “UC Berkeley
has a history of shunning Microsoft products. Because this is where
BSD/Unix was created, there’s a legacy of pro-Unix, anti-Microsoft
sentiment,” he says. Despite this obstacle,
Dhawan, who has spent summers interning at Microsoft, is championing
the company’s technology. “Even if people
don’t like Microsoft they should still know our technology so they
can make informed decisions and be marketable professionally,”
says Dhawan. The EECS senior
is promoting a Microsoft event on campus that he says will help foster
creativity in the area of software design. The Imagine Cup
will take place in early April. Anyone with a software design idea can
enter the international contest online. The design criteria
for the project call for a “smart element” or system that
learns as it’s being used. This would allow the product to adopt
and customize itself to the preferences of its users over time. Each
entry must incorporate a mobile element and have an attractive Web-based
interface, says Dhawan. Participants must
submit a proposal and prototype at the competition. The Berkeley winner
will get $100 and move on to regional competitions, then to the finals,
held this year in Brazil. The prize for the international winner is
$25,000. Last year, first
place went to a student from Nebraska. The one-man team impressed judges
with a virtual presentation of his Point of Delivery System (iPODS),
a multi-language wireless application that allows a waiter to use a
PDA to take orders in one language and transmit them immediately to
a server for translation into the chef's native language. |
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