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OUR STUDENTS MORE THAN MEET THE CHALLENGE

Team of Computing students from Imperial wins IBM ThinkPad Challenge 2004

A group of six Computing students, just starting their third year, won the IBM ThinkPad Challenge on 24th September 2004. Each student was given a top-of-the-range IBM ThinkPad laptop. The Department received a plaque and a cheque for £1,000.

The group, comprising Tristan Allwood ,William Osbourne, Matthew Sackman, Hanson Chow, Ferdinand Hoermann and Marc Hull, had already each won a £50 prize from IBM for carrying out the best second year group project in the Department, and were invited to take part in the challenge against similar top second year teams of Computing students from Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Exeter, Lancaster, Leeds, Loughborough, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, Surrey, UMIST, Warwick and York.

The group arrived at the Novotel Hotel, Southampton the afternoon before the challange and dined with three IBM people working at Hursley, including two of our old graduates. After dinner there was an informal warmup quiz and students had the chance to meet competitors from the other universities.

The next morning they were taken by coach to Hursley Park and were given
a short tour of the impressive grounds and buildings. There followed an introduction to the IBM centre and a presentation and demonstration of pervasive computing and voice control.

After the the rules of the challange had been explained, the students took part in the first round which involved logic and physical puzzles - for example the group was blinfolded and had to put a jigsaw together. Meanwhile Ian Moor and the other university tutors attended informal technical presentations on the application of pervasive computing to medicine and on tools for Java.

After lunch, the second round of the challange took place in a large room. Each group had to choose to answer questions at one of three levels of difficulty. They read the questions and entered their answers via a laptop, with all responses being timed.

After a short delay at the end of the second round the names of the three top groups were annaounced in reverse order. The group from Imperial group won. The students went up to collect their ThinkPad, and Ian Moor collected the cheque, on behalf of the Department.