Jiyoung Kim, Yi Zhou, and Yu-Jen Lin of the Sgraffi team.

The annual UMSI expoSItion showcase of student projects has just announced the winners of this year’s competition, which took place on Monday, March 26 in the Michigan League. Students demonstrated their ideas for a wide variety of applications that connect people with their communities, both near and far, using innovative technology.

And the winners of Best Overall Projects are:

1st prize $1,000 - Sgraffi
Team: Jiyoung Kim, Yi Zhou, Yu-Jen Lin
An IOS application would allow users to revisit their childhood by creating their own Sgraffitos.  Sgraffito is a technique produced by applying a layer of contrasting color on base layer, and then scratching the top layer to produce an outline drawing.

The application is available through iTunes.

2nd prize $500 - StoryCubes: Connecting Elders in Independent Living Through Storytelling
Team: Ramachandra Vijjapurapu, Micah Linnemeier, Yi-Ying Lin, Gierad Laput

3rd prize $250 - fridgeTop: Bringing Home-like Experience Back to Kitchen Space
Team: Gin Chieng, Ityam Vasal, Shwetangi Savant, Szu-Hsuan Lai, Yi-Yu Lin
A touch-based fridge surface application, fridgeTop aims to create a home-like experience within kitchen space in shared accommodations. It would allow for remote sharing on an interactive fridge surface with distant families.

Honorable Mention $100 - A2 DataDive
Team: Claire Barco, Nikki Roda
This weekend-long event, February 10-12, 2012, provided nonprofits with access to local data scientists to help them analyze their data. Over 70 data scientists volunteered their time to produce a number of helpful analyses for the two southeastern Michigan non-profit participants.

Attendees voted on Best Overall Project presentations based on these criteria:
• Related to SI curriculum
• Most attractive display
• Best presentation
• Most innovative topic
• Most applicable to the real world

The second and third place winners, StoryCubes and fridgeTop, will be representing UMSI at the annual CHI conference in May, having been selected earlier as among the 15 national semi-finalists.

Boeing Corporation and Yahoo! were event sponsors.