Ateneo universities sweep mobile application competition
Posted on March 17th, 2009
The 2009 Smart Wireless Engineering Education program or SWEEP is finally over. Ramon Isberto, Smart Communications Public Affairs Group head, said that this year’s competition’s theme focused on mobile applications that would be use for real-life disasters and emergency-related incidents, like earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and typhoons.
And to encourage more participants in the competition, Smart changed their rules regarding ownership of the applications submitted. Before, Smart owned the intellectual property of the students in previous competitions. This year, they only have right of first refusal for the first six months, after which the students can look for potential partners to help them develop the projects. This change would allow the students to pursue their projects after the competition.
It is also the first time that Smart tied-up with the Department of Science and Technology to identify projects that can be given funding for possible commercialization. “We hope to engage more schools in future competitions and encourage students to pursue careers in research and developments,†Isberto said.
And when the dust has settled, teams from two Ateneo universities emerged victorious, besting seven other schools to dominate the annual mobile application competition. Two students team came from Ateneo De Manila University and one from Ateneo De Davao University.
The team from Ateneo De Manila bagged the top prize of P500,000 pesos for their project called “Smart Goods†and another team from the same school won third place with their project “Iwas Baha†and took home P150,000. The team from Ateneo De Davao got the second place and won P300,000 for a project that combined global positioning system and a geographic information system.
Literally, Ateneo sweep the SWEEP competition. More that 70 teams submitted an entry in this year’s competition. The Ateneo De Manila University and Ateneo De Davao University would also receive cash equivalents in terms of grants. Seven other teams have received P30,000 as consolation prizes.
