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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Microsoft Jordan announced Dancing Pillow as the winning team of the Imagine Cup Jordan 2012 competition held on Tuesday under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah.

Members of the winning team will go on to represent the Kingdom at the Imagine Cup 2012 Worldwide finals in Sydney, Australia, in July. Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah presented the awards to the winning team and the three-runner ups during a ceremony at the King Hussein Cultural Center theatre.

Dancing Pillow is made up of students from the Jordan University of Science and Technology JUST, that includes Anwar Almojarkesh, Abdullah Lababidi and Abdallah Shakhatreh, who created an electronic pillow that wakes up the sleeper using light, vibration sound or smell.

The pillow aims to help people who are partially or fully deaf using its features, as well as heavy sleepers or people with insomnia.

"It’s difficult to describe this feeling. I finally get to see the result of long hours of hard work and late nights with minimal sleep. This achievement is remarkable and it will push me to accomplish even more with this project, especially with regards to serving the hearing impaired," commented Almojarkesh.

The second award went to the Kinect Therapy Team, made up of JUST students that include Ahmad Malkawi, Ruba Al-Sa’d and Suzan Momani, that created a game to help children with disabilities receive physical therapy in a more fun and cost-effective method, using the Microsoft Kinect device, serving both the patient and physician with a break-through system.

The third award went to Alliance Team, grouping students from Petra University. It includes Aya Bassam and Majdi Mohammad. The duo created TagTech, an interactive book for children based on augmented reality and dynamic tags that are highly customized according to the book, along with an integrated tag reader that guarantees children will have an entertaining fulfilling learning experience.

TagTech will help children in primary schools have an efficient, cost-effective and entertaining learning experience.

Walid Abu Hadba, Corporate Vice President, Developer Platform Evangelism Headquarters, said: "The Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition that provides participants with real life experiences by turning their ideas into reality. It gives me great pride to see the brightest young minds join together and harness the power of technology to take on some of the world’s toughest problems."

"Microsoft created the Imagine Cup ten years ago with the idea that students can and will change the world. What begins with a burst of inspiration and a lot of hard work can become a future software breakthrough, a jumpstart for a career, or a flourishing new industry. Last year, we saw Jordanian team, OaSys, take home third place in the Software Design competition at the Imagine Cup Worldwide finals. Every OaSys team member represents a source of pride and inspiration for Jordan and the IT industry," added Abu Hadba.

The six teams were judged in front of a panel of industry experts from the Academia, the IT industry, VCs and Startups, the Government, an NGO, Microsoft and the Telecom Partner.

Umniah mobile phone operator CEO Ihab Hinnawi, who was one of the judges, said: "Umniah proudly supports young people across Jordan all year round through several initiatives. We are especially committed to the future of youth within the ICT sector, and this competition offers them the chance to not only accelerate their own development, but also to contribute to the development of the sector as a whole."

Microsoft Jordan continues to invest in the talent and creativity of Jordanian students, which has proved to be successful.



*Petra