Auckland University students will be joining students from around the globe for the 2013 Imagine Cup world finals in Russia in July, as announced on Wednesday 24 March.

Imagine Cup is a global competition that challenges students to dream up new and innovative apps. With the support of Microsoft, their ideas are transformed into realities and taken from their region, to their country and finally to the world stage.

Team InfinityTek made up of Daniel Xu, Jacky Zhen, Ming Cheuk and Muthu Chidambaram were the overall winners for the NZ competition, and also first place in the World Citizenship category with their UVSense app. This meant their app showed "the greatest potential to make a positive contribution to the betterment of humanity".

The app uses a wireless wristband sensor to monitor UV exposure and send a notification to the users Windows 8 phone. It aims to help people monitor their skin cancer risk as it is the most common cancer in NZ.

The judges received proposals from 549 students across New Zealand for the 2013 competition, from which 100 were interviewed to find the 24 finalists.

The remaining category placings and winners are as follows. These teams will enter into an online judging round in the hope of joining the InfinityTek team at the world champs:

Category: World Citizenship

First Place ($6,000): InfinityTek

Second Place ($2,000): APPortunists
Haley Littlewood, Jess Howse, Kieran Thomson and Michael Watson
University of Waikato
Team APPortunists developed a medical system accessible via web browsers and smartphones that allows the capture and maintenance of medical records in the developing world. Records are available to both patients and health professionals. The system also tracks vaccinations, and can notify patients when they're due.

Category: Innovation
The innovation category winner is "the most innovative, ground-breaking and appealing app built with Microsoft tools & technology". Unlike the World Citizenship category, apps can be designed purely with business, personal or entertainment value.

First Place ($6,000): My Storyteller
Brian Cole, Ersin Buckley, Marcel Beetz and Shawnee Kitson
University of Waikato

The My Storyteller app for Windows 8 lets parents pre-record stories as videos, so they can ‘read to' their children even while at work or travelling. Customisable stories are provided by the application, and parents are given ‘karaoke style' prompts to read while recording. Children can read along on-screen as the video is played back to them.

Second Place ($2,000): AquaFORCE
Carl Crawford, Daniel Hampton, David Jackson and Fiorenzo Rutschmann
Otago Polytechnic
Team AquaFORCE's product is a cloud-based approach to aquarium management. It stores data gathered from existing aquarium-monitoring hardware, and makes it accessible to users via a cross-platform app for smartphones and tablets.

Category: Games
The winner is "the best game app built on a Microsoft platform".

First Place ($6,000): QuakeTown
Jason Lau, Auckland University of Technology, Tobias Sveaas and Zain Ali
University of Auckland
QuakeTown is a drag-and-drop construction game for Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 devices. Players create earthquake-resistant structures using a variety of real-world materials, meeting certain design goals, material and cost limitations. Once the structure is designed, the player shakes the device (or uses the keyboard for non-accelerometer devices) to simulate an earthquake of a given magnitude and see how their structure holds up using realistic physics calculations.

Second Place ($2,000): 2150 A.D.
Ada Shou and Ray Jiang, 
University of Auckland
2150 A.D. is a top-down space-shooter, with varied mission objectives, enemy behaviour and upgrade paths. The game is already available in the Windows Phone Marketplace, where it has received high ratings and a large number of downloads. At the time of writing, the game was being downloaded over 1,000 times per day.

To find out more about Microsoft Imagine Cup visit http://www.microsoft.com/nz/imaginecup/