A team from the University of Washington’s MS in Technology Innovation program at the Global Innovation Exchange has reached the finals of Microsoft’s 2022 Imagine Cup, a global student technology competition.

The UW melodic team, consisting of Xiaoyang Qiu, Jinyao Ouyang and Shuoxuan Wang, competed against tens of thousands of students from over 160 countries and qualified as the regional winners earlier this month. for the Americas. The team will face regional winners from Asia and Europe/Middle East/Africa in May.

According to Microsoft, each team had to tackle a local or global issue in their competition category – Earth, Education, Health or Lifestyle – and were evaluated on their use of Azure cloud technology, accessibility and inclusion, marketing as a business idea. , and its potential impact.

Melodic’s technology addresses the critical needs of prelingually deaf children, who can benefit from therapy to help them form appropriate sounds crucial for speech. Professional speech therapy is expensive and time consuming. Melodic’s solution leverages Azure to provide real-time analysis of mouth movements and sounds, and uses this information to provide breathing, mouth and sound training to children.

The system also gives speech-language pathologists the ability to create personalized, high-quality, widely deployable therapies at lower costs than traditional methods, according to a GIX article on the finalists.

Melodic was one of four GIX teams that qualified for the Regional Finals.

The team will compete in the world championships for a grand prize of $100,000 and a mentorship session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.