Two graduate students in the School of Informatics recently won $8,000 and the chance to bump into actor David Hasselhoff.
David Roedl and Will Odom won this year's Microsoft Imagine Cup competition in the interface design division on June 8 in Paris, according to the Imagine Cup Web site. In the competition, more than 200,000 students from around the world competed in nine categories, including Software Design, Game Development, Short Film and Interface Design.
During the week Roedl and Odom were in France, they also got a chance to sightsee, Roedl said. At one point, he said, they saw a fairly familiar face.
"We saw David Hasselhoff on the streets of Paris," Roedl said. "It was a nice bonus."
The theme of the Imagine Cup this year involved using technology to help create a more sustainable environment, according to the Web site. Odom and Roedl created the "IU Energy Challenge" in the spring to see which residence hall could use the least amount of water and electricity, according to the IU Energy Challenge Web site. That project took them to the Imagine Cup finals, Roedl said.
The competition, which is a culmination of a year's worth of smaller competitions over the globe, involved students from Korea to Australia, according to the Imagine Cup Web site.
The clincher in the Imagine Cup, Roedl said, involved being given a design problem with 24 hours to complete it. They first created a Powerpoint presentation, then presented their solution to the judges and answered the judges' questions, Roedl said. Although the pair had a good feeling about the challenge, Roedl said they were still nervous to give the presentation because of the time constraint and the fact that they hadn't slept in two days.
Roedl said he will use his share of the prize money to go toward his move to Washington, D.C. in the fall. There, he'll be working as a designer for Maptech, a company that creates navigation software.
Although Roedl and Odom missed their flight to Paris and arrived just as the competition was starting, Roedl said the team was confident the entire time about their project.
"We felt pretty good about our effort," he said. "We were definitely excited and surprised that we had won."
