UCD grad student shares prize for potentially lifesaving invention
A student team that includes a UC Davis graduate student has won a national technology competition for inventing cell-phone software that will help people in developing countries identify vascular diseases in children.
Wilson To, 24, who is pursuing a master's degree at the UC Davis veterinary school, and the two UC San Diego students on his team are taking their invention to Poland this summer where they will compete for a $25,000 prize with student winners from more than 100 countries.
The Imagine Cup contest, sponsored by Microsoft, asks students to use Microsoft technology to help solve a problem identified by the United Nations – in this case, the health of children in developing countries.
To and his colleagues developed software that runs on smart phones with the Windows Mobile operating system. Their idea was to bring a diagnostic tool to remote communities around the world where many children die from treatable diseases because they have little access to clinics or hospitals.
With phones running the team's software, a trained person can take a picture or video of a child's eye and transmit the image to a server that runs tests to determine if the child is likely to have diseases such as diabetes or hypertension. Symptoms of those disorders are visible in close-up pictures of blood vessels in the eye.
After the tests are performed on the images, the software sends a text message back to the phone, allowing the person in the field to make a more detailed diagnosis.
"It's a means of identifying children who are at risk so they can get further attention," To said. "Hopefully, that equates to lives being saved."
To said he hopes that winning the contest will allow him to make his invention more widely available to needy regions. He said some foundations have already expressed interest in promoting it.
Microsoft has been sponsoring the Imagine Cup contest for eight years. Chairman Bill Gates said in a statement that the competition illustrates the potential technology holds to solve some of the world's most complex problems.
"When I was a student tinkering with the first personal computers, I thought I had a pretty good idea of how PCs could be used," his statement said. "But in the 35 years since, I've never ceased to be amazed at the power of computing to make a difference in so many parts of our lives."