Congratulations to the first Czech student team who won global Imagine Cup competition!

Earlier this week, over 50 teams of student developers from 39 countries across the world met in Microsoft Campus in Redmond to compete for more than 200 000 USD prizes. One of them was Czech student team X.GLU. After intense rounds of presentations and demos, Marek Novak, Tomas Pikous, and Barbara Suchanova received super exciting  news - their innovative solution for helping children with diabetes won the first prize! The winning team  won large Azure grant, an 1:1 mentoring session with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella,   trip to the Build 2018 developer conference and a great cash award.

Fifteen years ago, when Microsoft first launched Imagine Cup, the premise was simple: create a global innovation competition to inspire the brightest young minds in the world to bring their boldest ideas to life with technology. I always feel incredibly proud when I see all the smart and passionate young people come together and share their visions of how technologies can help make the world a better place. At Microsoft, we believe that this generation of innovators has the potential to address some of humanity’s most pressing problems; from how to predict and monitor diseases like Alzheimer’s and depression, to identifying ‘fake news’ or increasing response times during natural disasters.

The X.GLU team’s winning idea addresses one of the biggist medical challenge of today - diabetes. Rather than carrying around the traditional large electronic blood sugar monitor, imagine a 4mm thin credit card-sized blood glucose meter connected to a smartphone in the patient's pocket. The smartphone controls the device and builds on power of cloud to collect, store and analyse data. Parents of children with diabetes are able to check that their child is sticking to their treatment schedule, and can even check on their last location, in the event of a hyper/hypoglycemic attack.

Today’s students are the makers and doers that will build and change the world as we know it. Through Imagine Cup, the world’s young technologists, developers and aspiring entrepreneurs collaborate to build a technology application, create a business plan and gain a keen understanding of what is needed to bring a concept to market. For many of them, Imagine Cup is the true kick-off moment for their dream come true. One of my favorite examples of a student team that got confidence through succeeding in Imagine Cup is GINA Software – the winner of local Imagine Cup round in 2010 and a successful Czech (or Moravian to be more precise) business with global impact today.

Big congratulations to X.GLU team and good luck in achieving their mission in the years to come!