Are you an Undergraduate student in Computer Science or Computer Engineering or a related field? Do you have ideas on how technology can tackle some of the everyday problems facing the Middle East and Africa? Do you have the passion and ability to see your ideas come to fruition?
Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC) invites you to apply for our summer 2008 Internship Program.
You are to apply as a group of 2-4 people and propose a solution for one of the listed problem statements. Your proposal must involve the creation and use of a Software Application or Service. Your proposal will be evaluated against other proposals and the winning proposal will be awarded a summer internship (subject to extension) at the Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC). Your internship assignment will be to implement your proposal.
Please select only one of the following problems to write a proposal on. Please mention the problem number at the top of your proposal.
Problem 1
Virtually every coffee shop in our region now has:
free wifi
1 or 2 LCD screens
5-10 people with laptops
20-30 people with mobile phones
Propose a software service which gets the coffee shop patrons to socially interact. Try to leverage any or all of the above.
Problem 2
Traffic is a major problem in Cairo as well all major cities in our region. People all over are armed with mobile phones usually with cameras and the capability to connect to the Internet.
Can you think of a web service that one mobile user can use while driving to check on the traffic situation at some location at a specific time point? Can this service use data entered from other drivers?
Problem 3
A typical college course outline contains the following as the course material;
Course slides
Reference books (with an electronic version)
Online papers and articles of interest to the course
Usually by the end of the course the student doesn't really know what was actually covered in the course out of each source.
Can you propose a software solution that would help students get 1 comprehensive course material out of the multiple sources stated in a course outline?
Problem 4
One of the many shortfalls in overburdened emerging market healthcare systems is effective post-treatment follow-up. Given the pervasiveness of mobile phones in the Middle East and Africa, how could these be leveraged to facilitate the provision and/or improve the quality of healthcare?
Propose a software service for the collection and dissemination of post-treatment patient information
Problem 5
Many pharmacies are now equipped with PCs connected to the internet and run software which monitors the medicines sold. Many hospitals store their patients' records on PCs which are also connected to the internet.
Suggest a software service to improve what is called “preventive medicine”. Preventive medicine is the part for medicine which avoids diseases instead of curing it; mainly by alerting people who have higher possibilities to have specific diseases based on their age, sex, living area, working area, etc.
Problem 6
A typical TV broadcast authority or station has a huge archive section storing hundreds of thousands of broadcast hours from the past. These include movies, programs, sitcoms, news programs, etc. TV stations typically only reuse a small fraction of the archive and the rest simply sits there collecting dust.
Given that broadband penetration is finally gathering pace in our region, can you think of a software service to allow stations to make better use of their archived multimedia content over the internet?
Clearly state your graduation date, degree, major, and University
Specify your technical skills (including programming languages and other development tools you are strong in), project details (both within university and at any jobs or internships you have held) and technologies you have used on those projects
Please reference any additional projects you've taken part in clarifying your role in the projects that you worked on, and what you achieved
Provide an active email address, physical address, and current phone number to best reach you
