Saving the Planet, One World-Class Scientist at a Time

Microsoft is hard at work inspiring and building the technology leaders of tomorrow. The end purpose is to save the planet one world-class scientist at a time according to Stephen Emmott, director of Computational Science at Microsoft and head of the Microsoft Research Computational Biology Group. Well, perhaps planet saving is over stretching it, but getting students to take on careers in science and technology is not. This is precisely the goal of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008.

The Redmond company's student competition for 2008 has entered its final stage on July 3, 2008. The Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 finals are seeing over 120 student teams from around the globe competing for no less than $240,000 in prize money. But at the same time, the Imagine Cup is not about the prize, as it is an excellent chance to define the start of a future technology and science career for the participants.

"Imagine Cup inspires these students to address the world's challenges in new ways and deliver innovative technology solutions that can truly change the world for the better. We hope that some of these students will become the entrepreneurs of the future, innovating and creating jobs like some of the previous winners. We wish all the finalists the best of luck in what will be an intense week of competition," revealed Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International.

The theme is this year's Imagine Cup is "imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment." This is why Microsoft Research's Emmott stressed the need for additional initiatives like the Imagine Cup to deliver an aura of "cool" to a thing like environmental sustainability.

"The technology we're working on at the lab will help scientists build more accurate models of climate change, taking into account the biotic aspects of climate change - forests and microbial communities, for example - and the coupling and feedback mechanisms to the physical components: atmospheric physics and atmospheric chemistry," Emmott revealed about his work with Microsoft Research.