SmartArm's AI-powered prosthesis takes the prize at Microsoft's Imagine Cup

A pair of Canadian students making a simple, inexpensive prosthetic arm have taken home the grand prize at Microsoft's Imagine Cup, a global startup competition the company holds yearly. SmartArm will receive $85,000, a mentoring session with CEO Satya Nadella, and some other Microsoft goodies. But they were far from the only worthy team from the dozens that came to Redmond to compete. The Imagine Cup is an event I personally look forward to, because it consists entirely of smart young students, usually engineers and designers themselves (not yet "serial entrepreneurs") and often aiming to solve real-world problems. In the semi-finals I attended, I saw a pair of young women from Pakistan looking to reduce stillbirth rates with a new pregnancy monitor, an automated eye-checking device that can be deployed anywhere and used by anyone, and an autonomous monitor for water tanks in drought-stricken areas.