Microsoft Awards Student Technology Rock Stars at Imagine Cup 2005

Microsoft today announced winners of the Imagine Cup 2005 after an intensive week of competition among finalists from a pool of nearly 17,000 students representing more than 90 countries, all vying for the chance to win cash prizes totaling close to a quarter of a million dollars.* Hailing from Russia, Team OmniMusic members Stanislav Vonog, Nikolay Surin, Alexander Popov and Ruslan Glifanov triumphed in the competition’s Software Design Invitational and took home the venerable title of Imagine Cup 2005 World Champions.

During the final presentation, the team identified music as a universal language. They demonstrated to judges and student attendees how their technology unites musicians across geographical and cultural boundaries by performing live onstage with one team member in a remote location. The team received a standing ovation from the audience. OmniMusic enables musicians to join a community, find other musicians of complementary skills and interests, perform live in a distributed environment, and share the real-time performance broadly via IP multicasting. Musicians are able to plug their instrument into a computer or a mobile device and be connected to other musicians all over the world. Truly innovative, OmniMusic solves latency problems to enable musicians to stay in synch while performing from different locations.

When asked about his experiences at the Imagine Cup, winning team member Surin said, “The most exciting, really inspired project that dissolves boundaries between all cultures is the Imagine Cup itself. All of these projects were born because of the Imagine Cup, and if I were a judge, I would give the Imagine Cup first prize.” After the Imagine Cup, the students plan to use the first place prize of $25,000 to develop OmniMusic further and realize their dream of a collaborative online music community.

Commenting on the students gathered for this year’s competition, Microsoft® founder and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said, “It’s amazing to see all these passionate students doing such great work. The Imagine Cup brings fun competition and tough challenges to the next generation of software innovators, and I’m excited that Microsoft is helping them succeed.”

More details @ Microsoft