A TEAM from the Department of Computer Engineering of the University of San Carlos (USC) was named the grand champion of Accenture’s annual campus challenge called Program the Future Challenge 2019.

Team Visionaries of USC developed a software called Parasight, a system that will detect the presence of Entamoeba histolytica, a parasite that causes amoebiasis, using artificial intelligence.

The system makes use of region-based convolutional neural networks (RCNN) to detect Entamoeba in microscopic slides.

The team is composed of Robert Espina, Alejandro Cansancio, Wincent Tan and Jericho Gantuangco. Their adviser is Dr. Rosana Ferolin.

The team won the grand prize of P300,000.

Team Addie from the De La Salle Lipa received the Accenture Technology Vision award for their personal therapy toy for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

With the use of facial recognition, hearing sensors and a sentiment analyzer, the toy will be able to assess how it will interact with its users and act as an alternative treatment for children with disability.

The Program The Future competition aims to spark innovation among Filipino college and university students to design and build technology solutions with positive impact on the society.

Program The Future emphasizes Accenture’s commitment to promote an innovative culture and mindset among students by leveraging the breadth of experience and expertise of its pool of technology talent as mentors in areas such as data analytics, artificial intelligence and user experience (UX) design.

The winners were announced on June 29, 2019. (MVI/SunStar Philippines from PR)