Trinity students keep eyes on the prize

Life

A team of students from Trinity College Dublin has headed off to Egypt to represent Ireland at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2009 World Final.

The Imagine Cup, now in its seventh year, challenges students around the world to realize their potential and experience the opportunities made possible through technology. This year’s theme, imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today, encourages teams to develop innovative technological and artistic projects that offer real-world solutions to real-world problems.

Trinity College Dublin’s team, Trinity Sight, project tackles the problem of blindness. They hope that through their project they can help relieve this problem by designing and building a simulator for eye surgical training. Currently, the system available costs €100,000. With this Project, Trinity Sight hopes to create a cheaper system for simulating the skills required for use during Cataract Removal surgery, using affordable off the shelf components.

Paul Rellis, managing director, Microsoft Ireland wished Trinity Sight the very best of luck saying, “At Microsoft, we are committed to empowering students and entrepreneurial businesses, to improve the world we live in by utilizing the power of software and technology innovation. The Imagine Cup competition achieves this goal for Microsoft by inspiring students to discover new ways to use technology.”

This is the third year that Ireland has competed in the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition. Trinity College students competed against over 550 students across the country from both north and south of the border before winning the Irish competition and the opportunity to represent Ireland on a global stage.

Aidan Lynch from the winning team said, “We’re delighted to have been chosen from amongst our peers to represent Ireland in such a prestigious competition. We’re looking forward to representing Trinity College Dublin, our fellow students and our country in Egypt and we’re hoping we go all the way.”

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