Tech titan Microsoft has opened the registration for this year’s Imagine Cup, its student competition that aims to spur young science and tech entrepreneurs to create new and innovative projects.
Through several rounds of online and in-person competition, students compete for the championship, cash prize, and mentorship.
Past Imagine Cup winners have spurred economic opportunities and employment, with many innovators seeing their career change after the competition. Some of the previous winners have gone on to work for Microsoft, delivering their innovation back to the market.
Other student competitors have built careers in startups, industry, healthcare and more, utilizing skills they learned throughout the competition experience and advice they received from mentors along the way.
To announce this year’s Imagine Cup, Microsoft Philippines held a virtual launch event recently, opening the competition up to Filipino participants.
Microsoft Philippines country manager Andres Ortola addressed the students, past Imagine Cup winners, public sector audience, and enterprise representatives in attendance.
Ortola encouraged Filipino students to submit their entries, citing that in the middle of a global pandemic, “Imagine Cup is an opportunity; a platform to connect and make a difference, through innovation. An example of that innovation is RapidPass, a project that saw Microsoft partnering with Developer Connect (DevCon) Philippines and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), to create an application to help frontliners delivering help when it was needed.”
Microsoft Imagine Cup 2021, which is now open to students for submission of entries, will offer a grand cash prize of up to $75,000. The winner not only brings the cash prize, but will also get a mentorship session with Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella.
The competition has become a platform for student teams to develop effective answers for improving the lifestyle of people around the globe, through the technology ideas they have created.
The past 19 years have seen more than two million students join this competition, from as many as 200 countries participating, with most of these student applications showing valuable and impactful projects, using Microsoft technologies.
Registration is now officially open for all interested participants. To register or learn more about Imagine Cup 2021, visit www.imaginecup.com.
