UW-Madison students to compete for Qualcomm Wireless Prize

Nearly 30 University of Wisconsin–Madison students will compete, with their smartphone apps and other wireless technology products, for more than $17,000 in prizes in the second Qualcomm Wireless Innovation Prize to be held Wednesday, April 18.

Students will present their creations in the Forum of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (WID). Posters and prototypes will be on display at the WID open court, room 1300L. All presentations and poster sessions are free and open to the public.

The competition is open to all UW–Madison undergraduate and master’s-level students, and will reward those who present the most interesting ideas combined with business plans to make those ideas profitable.

Media are invited to attend the competition. Winners will be announced at 4 p.m. in the Forum.

Here is the competition schedule:

• 8:30 a.m. — Opening remarks from Parmesh Ramanathan, competition coordinator and professor of electrical and computer engineering
• 8:45 a.m. — 9:10 a.m. — Prototype judging
• 9:10-9:25 a.m. — Plate: A dashboard, smartphone app and tablet-based menu to provide restaurants with consumer preference data. Team: Tom Rohlf, Lizhong Cao, Li Zhan.
• 9:30-9:45 a.m. — Letzgo: A free mobile device application allowing users to find and create pick-up game events and communicate them to friends. Team: Sean Kelly, Marty Clarke, Nick Welker.
• 9:50-10:05 a.m. — WInstruments: An internet enabled, personal, wireless weather station including error-checking mechanisms. Team: Alex Kubicek, Bryan Dow, Elise Garms, Kendra Hill.
• 10:10-10:25 a.m. — Laser Port (short-range free space optics): A data transfer system to bring high-speed optical communications to a domestic setting. Team: Herman Perera and Woo Saeng Park.
• 10:30 -10:45 a.m. — Gruvi: A mobile-to-mobile social networking application serving Big Ten university students and alumni. Team: Jonathan Rodriguez, Marcos Martinez, Borui Wang.
• 11-11:20 a.m. — Prototype judging
• 11:20-11:35 a.m. — Augmentative Communication Device: A novel method of communication that allows individuals suffering from communicative disorders to add emotion to their speech. Competitor: Prachi Agarwal.
• 11:40-11:55 a.m. — Indoor Maps: An indoor navigation and shopping mall application for smart phones. Team: Purushothaman Ramraj, Siddharth Puthur, Yashashree Kokje.
• Noon-12:15 p.m. — Vanilla Wafer: An electronic leash application allowing items to be tethered to a cell phone via bluetooth technology. Team: Karl Fraasch, Eric Dahl.
• 12:20-12:35 p.m. — Flextory: A flexible, web-based inventory system designed for multiple inventory scenarios. Competitor: Christopher Beley.
• 1:30-1:50 p.m. — Prototype judging
• 1:50-2:05 p.m. — Senior Centered: A customized, easy to use, tailored computing experience for the elderly to help them manage their lives. Team: Nicholas Ambur, Edward Tashjian, Omar Sanjak.
• 2:10-2:25 p.m. — New Partner Academic Networking: A web platform and computer or smart phone based application allowing students to communicate, make friends, study and improve academic performance. Team: Junzhe Wang, Hao Liang.
• 2:30-2:45 p.m. — DriveSense: A cost-effective integrated solution to transportation providers matching elderly riders with drivers. Team: Stephen Ranjan, Ozcan Ilikhan.
• 2:50-3:05 p.m. — Media Express: A dynamic pricing strategy for wireless service providers to distribute multimedia content for mobile clients. Competitor: Luyn Yang.
• 4-5 p.m. — Awards ceremony