July 8 – Italy is participating in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 finals, the technological competition involving students from around the world, to be held from today to July 11 in St. Petersburg. The Italian project is called SafeSex, a portal for Windows Phone and Windows 8 that allows users to have available at any time medical consultants, information on STDs and advice on various topics, as well as accessing a real-time database that provides the location of hospitals with emergency rooms, duty pharmacies and contraceptive distributors. The Ats Team, composed of Andrea Cesaro, Flavio Lambiase, Giuseppe Russo and Paolo Tagliaferri, all undergraduates or graduates in Engineering or Computer Science and from Lazio and Campania, will fly to Russia to compete for a total prize pool of over $300.000. The project, nominated in the Innovation category, includes a geolocation tool that allows to find points of interest such as pharmacies, hospitals, clinics and specialized centers. “Once again, the Italian finals of Microsoft Imagine Cup proved to be a great moment of sharing, where young talents from different Italian universities presented their innovative projects in a climate of widespread creativity. The three winning applications, which tackle major issues related to health and education, offer practical technological solutions. We hope that the Italian finalist, SafeSex, can also be recognized for its value during the competition in Russia, because of the ability to respond in a simple manner to the needs of most young people, exchanging views on a topic that is still taboo in many countries,” said Anders Nilsson, director of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft Italy. Over the past 10 years, more than 1.65 million students from 190 different countries participated in the Imagine Cup.
