2 student teams to represent Philippines in Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011 world finals

MANILA, Philippines - Besting over 350,000 entries from all over the world, two teams from the Philippines, Signum Fidei and Polymor.ph, have qualified for the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011 World Finals, which will take place in New York City this coming July 8 to 13.

Spearheaded by Microsoft Corp., the Imagine Cup is the world’s premiere student technology competition that gathers the best developers around the world, and harnesses the creative minds of the youth to address problems faced by the world today using the power of information technology. This year, the various entries of the students deal with humanitarian issues inspired by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals like health, environment, education and accessibility. 

Signum Fidei and Polymor.ph are the only Filipino teams who have made it to the world finals with their projects, “Conjunct!” and “Polymorph,” respectively. Signum Fidei qualified for the Game Design category while Polymor.ph will represent the country in the Software Design category.

Comprised of five members coming from Far Eastern University, De La Salle College of St. Benilde, De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila University, Team Polymor.ph’s software ‘Polymorph’ is a digital learning platform that utilizes a rule-based language translation engine to produce appropriate subtitles.

Inspired to transform information and uplift lives, Emanuel Saringan shared what their entry was about. “The plethora of educational content in the internet where majority are in the English language has helped many students in their learning endeavors. We believe that technology can bridge this language barrier that’s why we created Polymorph, a software that takes in an educational video in the English language as an input and uses Microsoft Speech API and Bing Translation Service in order to recognize the audio and generate its appropriate subtitles,” Saringan said. 

Meanwhile, four students from De La Salle University represent Signum Fidei. Their Conjunct! project is a puzzle game where the player has to clear boards overlaid with photos of real-life problems around the world, also based on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.