Queen Rania meets with winners of Microsoft Imagine Cup Jordan

AMMAN — Her Majesty Queen Rania met on Sunday with “The Pen” team members, who won the Microsoft Imagine Cup Jordan competition for 2014.

During the meeting, the Queen expressed her deep pride in all Jordanian youths who took part in the competition and congratulated Pen Team on their national win, according to a statement from Her Majesty’s office.

She wished them luck in the Imagine Cup Arab Semi-finals to take place in Qatar on June 3. 

The Queen also stressed the importance of supporting young local talents and encouraging further innovation.

The two-member Pen Team was the overall winner of Imagine Cup 2014 Jordan. 

The team also ranked first in the “Innovation” category, which recognises application developers who deliver accessible innovations and advance major platforms such as social networks, search engines, classified advertisements, or online shopping.

Fourth-year students at the Jordan University of Science and Technology Momen Nemrat and Tareq Domi won for developing an app that improves drawing and writing on touch screen devices.

The Microsoft Imagine Cup is a global student technology competition that provides an opportunity for students to use their imagination and passion to create technology solutions that address the main theme of the competition.

General Manager of Microsoft North Africa, Eastern Mediterranean and Pakistan Sayed Hashish, who also attended Sunday’s meeting, thanked Their Majesties King Abdullah and Queen Rania for their support, which helped pave the way for increasing Jordanian representation in Microsoft competitions.

Country Manager at Microsoft Jordan Hussein Malhas noted that this year, 500 students from different Jordanian universities and schools took part in the competition. Eleven teams reached the final stages and competed in three different categories.

Technology Evangelist Lead at Microsoft Ayman Afaneh said Pen Team will compete against participants from 22 Arab countries in the semi-finals. 

Winners of this round will move on to the worldwide final, taking place in July 2014 in Seattle in the US.