Team Skeek from Thailand won in Software Design for its project to translate sign language, SmarterME from Taiwan won in Embedded Development with a device that targets a home's biggest energy users, and By Implication from the Philippines won in Game Design for a game that uses to social media to help get young people interested in volunteering.

All the teams awards at this year's Imagine Cup represent the spirit of the annual week-long technology competition, said Jon Perera, general manager of Microsoft's education strategy.

Four-hundred students gathered in Warsaw's Opera House to close out this year's Imagine Cup finals. More than 325,000 high school, college, and university students in 113 countries and regions had registered for this year's competition. Cash prizes totaling approximately $240,000 were awarded across five competition categories and six awards.

This year’s competition was dominated by Taiwan, which won three of the 11 competitions and awards. In addition to Embedded Development, teams from Taiwan won the Digital Media category and the Envisioning 2020 award.

Team Skeek was surprised it made it into the Software Design competition’s final round, so the team was thrilled when they found out they had taken first place in the competition’s preeminent category.

“Honestly, I am speechless,” said Pichai Sodsai, from Kasetsart University. “This is the moment of our lives. Like all of you guys, we don't wait for the future. We create the future, and we change the world."

The judges were impressed with how Skeek built software that uses speech and facial recognition technology and a text-to-sign language translator to translate sign language in real time, said S. Somasegar, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division. Somasegar presented the trophy and a cheque for $25,000 to the overwhelmed students.

Team By Implication from the Philippines won the Game Design award for a video game about saving the world through social action and volunteerism. In Wildfire, players take on some of the biggest enemies there are – rampant poverty, gender inequality, and environmental degradation.

Team SmarterME took first place in the Embedded Development category for its Smarter Meter project, which provides detailed power consumption information to users. At a glance, homeowners can see what appliances consume power when and which ones are responsible for the bulk of their electricity bill.

At the end of the night, New York was announced as the site of next year’s Imagine Cup. Polish Deputy Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak passed off the Imagine Cup flag to Mark Hindsbo, the general manager of Microsoft's Developer Platform & Evangelism Group, and Hal Plotkin, the senior policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of the Under Secretary.