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

Four graduate students (Rohit Kadam, Vishvesh Khisty, Ashwin Kadkol, Raghavendra Rao) from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and one MAE graduate student (Prashant Hegde) at Oklahoma State University will compete in the world finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 09 to be held in Cairo, Egypt, July 3rd-7th, 2009. They are the only team representing USA in this worldwide competition under the embedded development category, as a result of the US finals held in Boston, May 2nd-5th, 2009. In that category,a total of twenty teams have been selected representing twenty different countries around the world. The list of selected teams can be found at http://imaginecup.com/Competition/Finalists.aspx

Students were invited from around the world to compete for some of the toughest problems facing us today which were part of United Nations millenium goals. 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 worldwide finals the teams had to submit a report and a video demonstration of the product. The report focused mainly on relevance of the problem, feasibility in manufacturing a commercial version based on the prototype, appropriateness of the embedded solution, the ability to exploit Windows Embedded CE 6.0 and whether the report itself depicts the whole picture in a defined manner. A total of 150 teams were selected for round 2 out of which 20 teams have advanced to round 3 in the embedded development category.