February 19, 2020:Microsoft Pakistan today announced the Pakistan winners of Imagine Cup2020 at at Pak-China Friendship Center, Islamabad. Imagine Cup is a Globalcompetition for students aged 16+. Fornearly two decades, students from around the world have participated inMicrosoft’s global technology competitionto bring their unique tech solutionsto life.Throughout the Imagine Cup competition, Microsoft Pakistan continuesto foster innovation among students and enables them to transform theirambitions into reality.  The Imagine Cup Pakistan winner With a clear vision thewinning team from NUST – Flowlines (aka.ms/flowlines), their idea to useaugmented reality to connect it’s users with the physical world was the winneramong 60 finalist teams from across the country. Congratulating the winners ofthis year’s national finals Dr Tariq Banuri; Chairman HEC said “Imagine Cup isall about innovation, transformation and what comes next. Imagine cup continuesto cultivate a spirit of social and technological entrepreneurship, empoweringstudents to use their creativity to address real societal problems throughtechnology. We have seen extremely innovative ideas coming in and the studentswho have been participating especially in the imagine cup and so many of themhave gone on to establish their own startups that are now becoming multimilliondollar companies. I am proud of our students for participating in this Globalevent and I am sure they will bring laurels for Pakistan”. The team will nowrepresent Pakistan at the upcoming regional semifinals in Amsterdam, Holland,to compete among global teamsfor over USD20,000 total in prizing, Azure credits, plus the top two willwin spots to advance to the 2020 Imagine Cup World Championship! During theirRegional Final journey, teams will also have the chance to participate in anEntrepreneurship Day from the U.S. Department of Global Innovation throughScience and Technology (GIST) torefine their business pitches, receive mentorship from Microsoft experts, andexperience cutting-edge technical innovation at MicrosoftIgnite the Tour. Also traveling to Amsterdamwith the Imagine Cup team will be the Microsoft Student Partner(MSP) , YaqoobJamal from NUST, to take part in MSP summit where he will join other MSPs fromthe region to talk about various aspects of technology and how these programscan be  incorporated  in Universities.   Microsoft Pakistan: An outstandingparticipation across the region  Microsoft Imagine Cupcontinues to witness strong participation from Pakistan, as well as worldover., as an initiative of the Strategic Partnership with HEC; Microsoft Pakistan&HEC reached out to more than 100 campuses this year through multiple outreachcampaigns in a bid to create awareness around the competition and effectivelymarket it to the audience, which resulted in record breaking project entries (600+)in this competition, almost double the number from 2019. HEC’s commitment tothe academia and students is reflected as Microsoft drives the Imagine Cup tohighlight Pakistan’s position on the leader boards – Thus, Pakistan ranks asthe top country in the World, with the highest number of project submissionsand competitors in Imagine Cup. A lot of remote and underprivileged areas weretargeted specifically in the drive for Imagine Cup, particularly Hyderabad,Jamshoro, Sukkur and Quetta. Students were initially evaluated in Regionalfinals, held in different cities and the best teams competed to win theNational Finals. The winning teams showcased their innovative thinking,technical skills and ground-breaking solutions to address everyday challenges. Country Manager MicrosoftPakistan  Shahzad Khan said “The talentwe have in Pakistan is phenomenal and competitions like Imagine Cup only helpto highlight this raw talent and give them a platform to reach the globalcommunity. Our focus should be to produce skillful, technically enabled andcertified graduates to meet the global market needs for engineering talent “ Senior Education Director forMicrosoft Middle East & Africa Harb Bou-Harbadded “As Microsoft we striveto bring the right set of tools and technology to students to expose them tothe skills required for the future of work.  The way we look at our students, we feel thatthey are the agents of change and they just need the right set of tools tosucceed. As a technology company we want to empower our students and enablethem to shape their future “ Imagine Cup is one ofMicrosoft’s many efforts to transform skill development, nurture buddingtechnologists and foster collaborative and innovative spirit.  This globaltechnology competition boasts of several success stories emerging from thecompetition. It’s a great platform to innovate, get recognized and eventuallyget enabled to bring about a positive change.