https://wiki.bc.net/atl-conf/display/BC ... +Challenge
There may be a better way to search your music library to find a specific genre of audio files, thanks to this year's Broadband Challenge winner Anthony Theocharis, a computer science, undergraduate student from the University of Victoria (UVic). His project, along with three others from UVic and Simon Fraser University (SFU), were recognized for their creativity and innovation with awards and cash prizes at the 2009 BCNET Annual Conference on Wednesday, April 29.
To see the Broadband Innovation Challenge in action, watch the recorded webcast.
First Place Winner
Theocharis's project, 3AD Framework: Adaptive, Automated, Audio Description, takes advantage of high-speed networks, like BCNET's advanced research network. The computer application helps to create a better index system for radio stations and television/film production companies to find the right audio files quickly and easily, no matter how enormous their libraries are.
This unique and innovative tagging and searching system awed the judging panel and earned Theocharis a first place standing at this year's Challenge. He was presented with $2,500 cash by Clarence Lee, BCNET's Manager of Client Services, during the Broadband Innovation Challenge session.
Broadband Challenge helps Theocharis to excel in his Academic Standing
For Theocharis, the Challenge helped him succeed academically, as he graded an A+ for his coursework for which his award-winning project was a part of the course requirement. "I've built stronger relationships with the professors that aided me during the course of the project and I now have two mentors for help and guidance," Theocharis told us. The Challenge also provided him an opportunity to grow personally. "It's too easy to go through school with your head down, without creating anything really new, without seeing a useful project through from start to finish. The Broadband Innovation Challenge provided the motivation and opportunity to do those things, and I'm glad I took it," said Theocharis.
Not only did the Challenge help him develop scholastically and personally, his involvement allowed him to network with professionals and to learn more about his field. "I got to meet a bunch of really interesting people and attend talks about the issues locally and globally." As an added bonus, the experience helped Theocharis improve his public speaking and communication skills, which are an essential asset to any professional team. "These are skills that many people in our industry need more practice with, and any opportunity to hone them, especially while still a student, is a blessing."
Second and Third Place Winner
The second place prize of $2,000 was awarded to Neal Clark, (pictured left), a UVIC undergrad student, for his project CubeScape: A Scalable Approach for 3D Worlds. His application has the potential to develop scalable 3D environment for massively multi-player online video games and other physical simulations alike.
And, last but not least, Xu Cheng, (pictured right) a graduate student from Simon Fraser University (SFU), took away the third-place prize of $1,500 for his project, NetTube: A Social Networks Based Peer-to-Peer Short Video Sharing System, which is a content-sharing site based on a peer-to-peer network.
Special Mention
Honorable mention was given to Joe Ying and Roy Tang, SFU undergraduate students, for their SFU Virtual Campus. In addition to their special mention, they each received $200 prize monies and one free pass to the Apple Developers Conference from Willi Powell, Strategic Development Manager at Apple.
2009 Poster Competition
What gathered a lot of buzz this year was the BCNET Poster Competition. Graduate, undergraduate, and diploma students were invited to create posters and present their research work on network applications to conference attendees. Winners not only received award certificates, but they were also presented with $150 prize monies.
Thank you, sponsors!
Many thanks to the BCNET Corporate Partners for sponsoring the Broadband Challenge and for making the prize monies possible. This year's sponsors are Apple, Shaw, Telus, Juniper Networks, and RackForce. Also, thanks to Industry Canada for supporting the competition. Their support, no doubt, continues to help BCNET promote student innovation using advanced networks to create collaborative and commercially viable computer applications.
Images from the BCNET 2009 Broadband Innovation Challenge & the BCNET Conference Poster Competition