news

Healthy Shopping App Wins Big in MIT STEM Competition

Two women studying at Cornell University have won $10,000 for designing and developing a Web application that can help people make healthier choices while grocery shopping.

Claire Lambrecht and Rachel Wang — both MBA students at Cornell Tech, part of the Johnson Graduate School of Management — shared the TradingScreen Technology Entrepreneurship Award at the recent “Dream it. Code it. Win it.” student coding competition for an application called Epicure.Epicure, Philippe Buhannic, Mariel Tucker, Cristina Dolan== 2nd Annual Dream It, Code It, Win It, Contest== The Cooper Union, Great Hall, NYC== April 30, 2015== ©Patrick McMullan== Photo - Sean Zanni/PatrickMcMullan.com== ==

The contest — open to university and high school students and co-organized by the MIT Club of New York, MIT Enterprise Forum of New York City and TradingScreen — is aimed at promoting creativity, diversity, and literacy in the field of computer science.

Epicure automatically analyzes online receipts from people’s personal grocery shopping and recommends healthier options to the items they’ve chosen, Lambrecht and Wang told Design News.

“Changing eating habits is hard,” Wang explained. “Existing products aren’t much help. They require you to count calories, log food journals, and buy specialty foods. Epicure makes it easy to change your eating habits. All you need to do is log in, and our system automatically handles the rest.”

Click here to read the full article.

Elizabeth Montalbano – DesignNews – May 14, 2015

Dream It. Code It. Win It. 2015 Winners Announced

When Cristina Dolan, MIT Media Lab Alumna and co-founder of OneMain, organized the first Dream it. Code it. Win it. competition in 2014, she ended up winning the Traders Magazine Charitable Contribution Award and an MIT Volunteer Honor Roll nod. Four of the 2014 teams of finalists went on to launch companies from their submissions.

The student coding competition is judged based on both the quality of the problem being tackled by the competitors and on the solution itself, with the aim to “promote creativity, diversity and literacy in the field of computer science.” The judging panel brings together experts from three tech-heavy sectors: finance, media and technology.

Winners of the 2015 competition were announced and celebrated at an “Unleashing Opportunities with Technology” event April 30, where speakers discussed how computer science education can create these new opportunities across industries. Winners worked on solutions in virtual reality, computer simulation and biological-related applications, among many others. Interestingly, as was the case in 2014, the majority of the applicant pool were female.

The winners and their solutions:

Click here to read full article.

IT Business Edge – May 6, 2015

Dream it. Code it. Win it. Founder Wins Charitable Works Award

Cristina Dolan, the founder of Dream it. Code it. Win it., has been honored by Traders Magazine with a Charitable Works Award for her work with Dream it. Code it. Win it. Traders Magazine celebrates accomplished women in Finance with its “Wall Street Women: A Celebration of Excellence” Awards every year.

traderslogo (2)

Dolan, who started Dream it. Code it. Win it. in 2013, was responsible for creating and executing the contest, which awarded more than $70,000 to high school and college students for their work in Computer Science.

She plans to launch another contest in 2015. If you are interested in sponsorship or partnership opportunities, send an e-mail to info@dreamitcodeitwinit.org.

Success Stories After Dream it. Code it. Win it.

Updates from Winners of the Contest

1420024_21828551

David Taitz & Hikari Senju – Balloon – First Place $20,000

“Since DiWiCi, Balloon has used our prize to focus on the user experience of our mobile app and rebuild our former product from user feedback and data. We expanded our team considerably–taking on other bright college students who are as close to the problem we are trying to solve as we are.

After months of hard work, we have refocused Balloon to help get your friends together at a moment’s notice by cutting through the flakiness and noncommittal “maybes”. You choose the group and decide on the plan. Your friends receive personalized invitations that expire at an RSVP deadline set by you. Until then, Balloon sends them reminders to get you a quick response.

We published the redesign of the Balloon in the AppStore in July, and have been iterating quickly on user feedback to deploy improved versions on a weekly basis. Our usership is growing steadily, and even more importantly, we believe we are starting to prove some of our assumptions on user behavior in our data. We are extremely excited to officially launch at college campuses at the start of the semester and also release our first Android version.

We cannot thank DiWiCi, the MIT Enterprise Forum, the MIT Club of NYC, and TradingScreen enough for the help in moving Balloon forward.”

Continue reading

ABC WHSV 3 – JMU Student Develops New Search Engine


WHSV_weblogo_050212_3

oaddo

An area college student wins thousands of dollars for his innovative idea when it comes to searching the Internet.

The new search engine is called Oaddo. It was developed by JMU student, Tim Borny as part of his capstone project with the university. The idea earned him about $10,000 in prize money.

It was all part of the “Dream It. Code It. Win It.” competition sponsored by the MIT Club of New York.

What makes his search engine so innovative is the way it helps you look up content you never would even think to type into Google, Yahoo, or Bing when it comes to researching a subject.

Click here for detailed coverage.