From left (first row): Vishvesh Khisty, Rohit Kadam, and Prashant Hegde (MAE). (second row): Ashwin Kadkol, Raghavendra Rao.

Four graduate students from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Oklahoma State University and one MAE graduate student will compete in the US finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 09 to be held in Boston, May 2nd-5th, 2009. They are one of the six teams representing USA in this worldwide competition under embedded systems category.

The objective of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 09 Embedded Development competition is to unleash students' creativity in an effort to change the world into a better place. This year's theme is "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today." The United Nations has identified some of the hardest challenges in the world today in its Millennium Goals. This year the Imagine Cup uses these ambitious challenges as a guiding light to inspire change all over the world. The US finals would be held in Boston this year. The event focuses on Software Design Competition, Entrepreneurial workshops and community showcase wherein the students get the opportunity to expose the projects to Microsoft Executives, Tech Elites, local students, and others, and also participate in some fun activities around the Boston Area.

The goal of this OSU team is to design a Reciprocative System for Health Automation (ASHA), which is an electronically assisted medicine vending machine for addressing the problems faced by people living in remote areas with little or no medical assistance.

To enter the US finals, each team had to create and submit a report to lay out their design including hardware and software architectures. A total of 550 teams had submitted the preliminary report worldwide, out of which a total of 150 teams from around the world were selected to proceed to round 2. Among these 150 teams 6 of them have been selected from USA.