Colombo, Sri Lanka: Pamodya Maheshani and Prabath Shalitha from Virtusa were part of the outstanding four-member team Nana Shilpa from Sri Lanka, which was placed Runner Up at the recently concluded Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals 2022. The team competed against 15 teams from Asia to represent the region in the World Championship held at the Microsoft Headquarters in Seattle, USA.
Imagine Cup is an annual global competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. that empowers the next generation of student developers to direct their creativity, passion and knowledge of technology to create applications that can resolve emerging global challenges and social issues. This year, the competition celebrated 20 years of inspiring and inclusive projects to make a real difference in people’s lives, while developing valuable skills of young innovators from 160 countries across the world.
“The key value learnt here was team work,” Pamodya Maheshani commented. “It was also a very fulfilling experience to have exclusive training sessions as well as weekly mentoring sessions with Microsoft experts with such purposeful feedback to improve our project as well as our way of thinking.”
The team’s solution “Nana Shilpa” is a mobile application used to screen learning disabilities among primary school students using modern machine learning and deep learning techniques. The team used medically consulted data to identify multiple variants of two specific learning disabilities; dyscalculia – a wide range of learning disabilities involving numbers, and dysgraphia – the condition of impaired handwriting. If a possible risk of the disability condition is identified in a student, the application also provides refinement activities to improve the child’s condition. Projects were judged on their innovative use of Azure technology, accessibility and inclusion, and marketability as a business idea. Team Nana Shilpa battled for the championship with the top teams from Americas and EMEA regions, with the EMEA team walking away with the grand prize.
“We addressed a sensitive topic which affects a larger audience, and we have built a complete solution which is affordable for everyone. Learning how to transform an idea into a marketable solution through this competition has been a truly valuable lesson,” Prabath Shalitha commented.
“We congratulate Pamodya Maheshani and Prabath Shalitha on their achievement and commend their contribution towards making a difference in the world,” Shiham Nawaz, Head of Capability Transformation and Operations Leadership at Virtusa Sri Lanka stated. “Virtusa is proud to set the benchmark of Sri Lanka’s future IT talent pool by recruiting Sri Lanka’s top talent to propel growth, new thinking and innovation.”
As the premier Digital and IT solutions company in Sri Lanka, Virtusa continues to set exemplary benchmarks in building the next generation of IT talent, and is single largest employer of fresh graduates in the country with an intake of over 500 interns annually.