Big Bang” wins National Imagine Cup 2009

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Editor

Again!, ITB's students win Microsoft's software competition Imagine Cup. "Big Bang" team, which consists of David Samuel, Dody Dharma, Dominikus Damas, and Samuel Simon, wins National Imagine Cup 2009. In addition to 15 million Rupiahs prize, they will be representing Indonesia to global level competition of Imagine Cup 2009 in Kairo, Egypt. By this winning, ITB's successfully keeping the champion tradition. Last year, ITB's team of Antarmuka, with their Butterfly software, became a global level champion in Rural Award category.

National level of Imagine Cup 2009 took place in Shangri-La Hotel Jakarta. The judges, including CEO of Microsoft Corporations Steve Ballmer, found that Big Bang program, which is called MOSES (Malaria Observation System and Endemic Surviliance), is the most suites to this year competition theme which is "Solving the World's Toughest Problem". Big Bang's MOSES is better than Demeter Program by Kabayan team from Institut Teknologi Telkom and also better than Pusaka Team from ITB.

Malaria is a simple disease actually, but its detection sometimes needs a long time because after patient's blood was taken, it needs couples of days to find out the test result. MOSES program able to detect malaria disease by calculating Plasmodium content in blood. Dominikus said that MOSES will not replace doctors, it just only the tool to help speeding up testing process.

Tony Seno Hartono, staff of National Technology Division of PT Microsoft Indonesia, said that this year competition theme is to face tough challenges in the world, such as to reduce hunger, poverty, AIDS and to improve education, pregnant moms' health, and environment sustainability.

At Imagine Cup 2009 in Indonesia, Microsoft only select winner from Software Design category. Globally, competition categories include Embedded Development, Game Development, Robotics and Algorithm, IT
Challenge, Mash Up, Photography, Short Film, and Software Design.