UK students' MS codeathon triumph

Imagine Cup qualifiers en route to Brazil

By Lester Haines • Get more from this author

Posted in Developer, 8th April 2004 11:29 GMT

Three university students are today dusting of their Lycra beach volleyball briefs and Portuguese dictionaries after winning the UK round of Microsoft's Imagine Cup.

Ali Gardezi, Andrew Grieve and Mat Steeples - of the Universities of Sheffield, Aberdeen and Hull, respectively - will travel to Brazil in July to compete in the competition's international final. The ultimate winners will pocket a sambatastic $25,000.

The trio of programmers beat off six other teams during a three-day codeathon to emerge triumphant last night with their winning mobile app - a resource to "help students adapt to university life by bringing together social and academic resources in a location aware mobile application".

Andrew Grieve said: "We really didn't expect to win after such an intense 72 hours of coding, and now we're looking forward to some sleep! The final in Brazil will be amazing, and we are looking forward to taking on the rest of the world." ®

UK students - fancy a trip to Brazil?

Free Report - "High-level Best Practices in Software Configuration Management: How to deploy SCM software to the maximum advantage"