Skolkovo, ASI Become Microsoft Imagine Cup Partners

The worldwide finals of the Imagine Cup, the world's premier student technology competition, will take place in Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg on July 8-13, 2013. The prize fund is 340,000.

ASI representative Dmitry Peskov praised the competition as an important opportunity for young people to "show their talents to the whole world and put unique projects into practice.”

"The Imagine Cup was approved by the ASI Supervisory Board,” Peskov said. "The project has been submitted to Russian President Vladimir Putin [who chairs the ASI Supervisory Board], and he expressed his full support,” said.

The three-party cooperation agreement was signed by Peskov, Microsoft Russia President Nikolai Pryanishnikov and Skolkovo Foundation Vice President Oleg Alexeyev. The sides will continue to promote the Imagine Cup in Russia and raise its status in the country.

So far, 288 Russian projects were registered to take part in the Imagine Cup 2013. With registration open until February, the number of Russian participants is already three times higher than last year’s figures.

Imagine Cup is the world largest students’ technological competition held annually since 2003 and supported by Microsoft and some other companies and non-profit organizations. About 1.7 million of students from 190 countries have so far taken part in it. Ukrainian team quadSquad from Donetsk won last year’s competition with their project to convert gestures used by deaf people into a voice message.