Winners of the 2009 US Imagine Cup Microsoft Student Competition

This project was chosen because the State of Arkansas Department of Human Services (DHS) Children’s Services does not currently have a centralized database holding information for all children available for adoption in the custody of DHS. Case Workers for the Division of Child and Family Services are aware only of those children for whom they are personally responsible and perhaps others whose cases are handled within the same office. The pool of children available to parents wishing to adopt is limited to those known to the Case Worker assigned to the parents. In order to reach outside of this narrow collection of information a great deal of legwork is required on the part of the parents to contact DHS offices outside of their county of residence.

Special Child is dedicated to providing a quality product to our clients that not only assists and organizes the adoption process for our customers, but sees to it that every child awaiting adoption spends as little time waiting on a list as possible. The goal of the Special Child Adoption Services application is to put in place a centralized database as a location to store information about children in need of a permanent home and potential adoptive parents. Special Child’s design will provide quick access to shared information. Thus, the adoption process is handled efficiently and effectively.

The Special Child project brings together the 2009 Imagine Cup theme “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today” by utilizing technology in a way that resolves an issue yet to be addressed on the local level.

The Team: 

• Joshua Thacker is currently working on a Master’s Degree in Management Information Systems at UALR
• Sandy Callahan conceived the main idea of Special Child and is the overseer of the quality of the project.  She is a current graduate student at UALR. 
• Shreyasi Dutta has been working on the technical aspects of this project. 
• Tomica Seals is in her second year of graduate school at UALR and is pursuing a Master of Science in Management Information Systems. 

Mango Bunnies

The Project: 

The application, Computer-Assisted Medication Regimen Adherence (CAMRA), will assist people with complex medication regimens. CAMRA is targeted to HIV/AIDS patients and will be convenient and discreet. CAMRA is unique because it uses mobile technology and only requires a mobile device, something many people already own. There is no product on the market that leverages the portability and convenience of mobile devices to turn them into stand-alone health care products.

The Team: 

• Ashley is a junior Computer Science major at DePauw University.
• Erin ‘Ed’ Donahue is a senior Computer science major at DePauw University.
• Malisa is a sophomore Computer Information and Technology major with a focus on web development at Purdue School of Engineering and Technology.

Aurora Borealis

The Project: 

This proposal presents a cost-effective mobile health-care infrastructure that would address the needs of the expecting mothers and children in rural areas around the world. It, therefore, addresses two problems identified as Millennium Goals – maternal health and child health. The rural health infrastructure is inadequate or totally absent in developing and underdeveloped countries. The proposed solution deals with the challenge of inadequate infrastructure to ensure that medical help reaches the expecting mothers and infants in a timely manner. The solution requires global partnership for purchasing the components involved in operating the proposed business model. The core of the solution is a graphical expert system tailored for maternal and child health. The patient condition is captured through pictures and the system can be customized for any local language or dialect. The overall quality of life of the people living in rural areas can be improved by extending this system and adding the extra functionality for addressing other challenges like agricultural problems or combating AIDS/HIV.

The Team: 

• All the three team members are pursuing their Ph.D. at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
• Ritu Arora is doing her research in the area of generative programming and high performance computing.
• Zekai Demirezen is doing his research in the area of domain-specific modeling and semantics of domain specific languages.
• Yu Sun stood 3rd in the regional ACM South East programming contest.