Shawn Frank is no stranger to the Microsoft Imagine Cup, one of the world's biggest student technology competitions.
Three years ago, he and his team from the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD) submitted to Microsoft a mobile app that acts as a low-cost screening device to test the hearing of construction crew and other low-income workers. They are now trying to obtain a patent for that idea.
Mr Frank then resubmitted the same project a year later, in 2010, with enhancements and a new feature, while last year he sent in a different mobile app called momEcare, which delivers health information and video tutorials to pregnant women in remote areas.
The concept of momEcare pushed Mr Frank's team from the regional contest in Dubai to the global finals in New York, where ultimately they lost.
There is good reason why Mr Frank, 21, has been so keen to win the top prize.
The Imagine Cup has rewarded participants who can help solve some of the world's toughest social problems with free access to software, mentoring and up to US$215,000 (Dh789,716) in cash prizes.
The annual competition has also created a $3 million, three-year grant to help working concepts become a reality and now includes more than 350,000 participants, up from just 3,000 when it was launched in 2003 by Bill Gates, the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft.
"This is the major competition out there, and it's more than just winning," Mr Frank says.
"It's the exposure you get from these competitions, and technology you get to use," he adds. "You get a good network of people."
Even though Mr Frank recently graduated from UOWD with a computer science degree, and now works as an IT professional in Dubai, he and others were still eligible to compete in this year's Imagine Cup as they had been enrolled in high school or college between January last year and the end of next month.
Which is why he was at it again this year, pitching his latest mobile app that was conceived along with his friend Ronak Dave. Their mobile app - project "reutilizar" - helps restaurants and manufacturers get paid for selling food waste to biofuel plants for the creation of energy.
Yesterday, they competed as one of the top-five finalists in the UAE for a spot at the global finals in Sydney in July - and won.
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