7/14/2011

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

	MICROSOFT
	Rice student JungWoo Lee, left, explains how his team’s game, "Azmo the Dragon," helps children manage their asthma while teammate Chase Sandmann blows into a digital spirometer to measure his lung capacity. In the game, children control a fire-breathing dragon in part by using the spirometer, which helps parents and doctors monitor lung capacity.

A team of Rice University students and recent graduates rode a dragon to high honors this week at Imagine Cup 2011, an international technology competition sponsored by Microsoft that draws thousands of entries every year.

Team Dragon finished third in the "Game Design -- Mobile" category with its creation, "Azmo the Dragon." The fanciful game has a serious purpose: to take the drudgery out of checking lung capacity for children who suffer from asthma.

The unique combination of hardware and software incorporates a spirometer -- a tube-like device that measures lung volume -- connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone running Windows 7 Mobile. As the child blows into the tube, the game's central character, Azmo the Dragon, breathes fire. The stronger the child blows, the more fire Azmo breathes and the easier it can battle through various game levels.

The team members are Lovett College junior JungWoo Lee, Veronica Burkel '11; Martel College sophomore Chase Sandmann and Pierre Elias '11. Joe Warren, professor and chair of Rice's Department of Computer Science, and Dr. Clifford Dacso, a senior member of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, executive director of the Abramson Center for the Future of Health and an adjunct professor at Rice, are the team's advisers.

The low-cost, open-source spirometer was developed by a team from the Center for Multimedia Communication (CMC), including Ashutosh Sabharwal, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE); Siddharth Gupta, CMC research engineer; and Peter Chang and Nonso Anyigbo, undergraduates majoring in ECE. The novel hardware, software and game are part of the new Rice Scalable Health Initiative.

The awards were announced in a ceremony in New York City July 13.