Sri Lankan IT teams ready for Egypt competition

The most exciting technology competition in Sri Lanka the Imagine Cup 2009 ended with Team MAHEE from Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology SLIIT) emerging winners in the Software Design category. The winning team will fly to Egypt to compete at the grand finale of the Imagine Cup scheduled from July 3 to 9.

Country Manager, Microsoft Sri Lanka Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne, Developer Evangelist Wellington Perera with Mahee team members

Apart from MAHEE, Sri Lanka is represented by three other teams from the University of Moratuwa thus entering four categories out of the nine that are available, creating history.

Country Manager, Microsoft Sri Lanka Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne said that this is a competition with no barriers for students to compete while the teams get immense exposure both locally and globally.

He said the winners are absorbed by some of the best software companies while getting an opportunity to meet world class developers at the same time.

He said that Sri Lanka being a small country and to have four teams in the finals is a great achievement, while Korea is represented by three teams.

The country manager said that the winners will be selected purely based on the quality of work.

He added that this is the fifth year since the Microsoft organised the competition and every year the students have improved the quality of the work as well as the sophistication which is the way forward to build capacity in the country.

Team MAHEE competes in the Software Design category at the global finals, Team SAS_EN competes in the Embedded Development category, Team Sasrutha in the MashUp category and Pramuditha Aravinda competes in the Robotics & Algorithm category.

Under the program "Software for the 21st century "organised by Microsoft the company provides the latest software to university students, laboratories and lecturers at no cost as we want the university students to use world class software.

Developer Evangelist Microsoft Wellington Perera said that there is a lot of prize money and training for winners besides that the exposure the students get is tremendous which is the main reason students should apply.

Attracting over 800 participants this year from Sri Lanka alone, this competition offers a rich opportunity for young IT enthusiasts to showcase their talent and creativity on a global platform.

Of the five teams that had presented at the local final, the team legal advisors from University of Colombo School of Computing earned second place for their project while Team InnoWorks from the University of Moratuwa bagged the third place.

The 4th and 5th places were awarded to Team Sakila from University of Moratuwa and the Team Aegis Software from SLIIT.

Team Leader of Mahee Akila said "the thirst to win was the reason for them to participate but that they had learnt a lot and they not only will get the opportunity to represent the country but also learn from students of our age and improve "further.