A team of four Maltese students reading for a Bachelor of Science honours degree in information technology, will be representing Malta in the worldwide finals of the regional competition they won.

Abigail Cauchi, Jennifer Fenech, Karl Fenech and Luana Micallef, came first in the East Mediterranean regional Microsoft Imagine Cup competition 2007. They are specialising in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAI) stream.

Participation in the competition was made possible by the Ministry for Investment, Industry and IT and Microsoft.

The students will be representing Malta in the worldwide finals, scheduled to take place in August in Seoul, South Korea. They will compete with teams from all over the world and it was the second time that Malta placed first in the regional competition: last year a team of University students placed first and travelled to India to participate in the worldwide competition finals.

Imagine Cup is an annual competition organised by Microsoft Corporation which brings together young technologists world-wide to help resolve some of the world’s toughest challenges. The software design competition invites teams of up to four students from post-secondary and tertiary educational institutions to submit their ideas in the form of software solutions which address a specified theme. The Imagine Cup competition commenced four years ago, and already more than 100,000 students from over 100 countries have participated.

Imagine Cup 2007 is themed “Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all”. Participants were encouraged to use cutting-edge technologies to come up with creative and innovative solutions for improving educational opportunities for students around the world. The mission is closely aligned with the Education For All (EFA) goals, established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which aims to “universalise primary education and massively reduce illiteracy by the end of the decade.”