SD Express Student Projects Competition Winners Announced

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Politecnico di Milano universities win the inaugural challenge

SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SD Association (SDA) today announced the winners of its first SD Express Student Projects Competition: Shira Barmats and Shaked Levi from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology for their “Remote PPG-based Vital Signs Monitoring” submission that won a cash price of $20,000 USD and who will be invited to present at a future SDA trade show.

The SDA also awarded Itay Hovav and Roy Cohen from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology with $10,000 USD for “System for Real-Time Detection of Wildfires," and Michael Patrini from Politecnico di Milano won $5,000 USD for “AI-Powered Edge Storage for Smart Cameras Using microSD Express Toward Smarter, Safer Crosswalks.”

“We were very excited to get such interesting projects from highly rated universities around the world, mostly running the latest AI algorithms in AI-at-the-edge units using microSD Express as their main memory device,” said Yosi Pinto, Chairman and President of the SDA. “Whether for initial fast uploading of AI algorithms, real-time model uploading, fast reads during the AI inference process, or simply shortening the read/write process of data to release CPU time for real-time pipeline processing of AI operations — the high speed and low latency capabilities of microSD Express with its PCIe/NVMe interface enable new use cases we never imagined when we were working on designing the first SD cards more than 25 years ago and the student designs we received clearly demonstrate their usefulness is unlimited.”

The competition attracted student participants from universities from around the world. Submissions used a microSD Express memory card as the main storage device, operating on an Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Development board. Students had freedom to choose their projects; each submission was evaluated based on breadth and depth of use of microSD Express supported by quantitative analysis. Use of new technologies including artificial intelligence/machine learning, augmented reality/virtual reality, robotics or gaming gained higher preference. Other judging criteria included overall functionality, value and impact, creativity and clarity of each submission.

A total of 21 students from six prestigious universities joined the program and the SDA received 14 submissions from students attending the following universities:

• The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
• Politecnico di Milano
• Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
• University of California Davis

The SDA created this opportunity for future product designers to experiment with the remarkable capabilities of SD Express technology with a goal of demonstrating to the world new use cases enabled by these new cards. The competition started as part of the yearlong celebration of the 25th anniversary of the SD memory card and the 20th anniversary of the ground-breaking microSD. The SDA hopes to continue this initiative in the next academic year.

SD Association

The SDA is a global ecosystem of nearly 800 technology companies charged with setting interoperable SD standards. The SDA encourages the development of consumer electronics, wireless communication, digital imaging, industrial and networking products utilizing market-leading SD technology. The SD standard is the number one choice for consumers and businesses, having earned more than 80 percent of the memory card market with its reliable interoperability and easy-to-use format. Today, smartphones, tablets, drones, IoT devices, HDTVs, audio players, automotive systems, computers, digital cameras, and a variety of industrial uses feature SD interoperability. For more information about SDA or to join, please visit the Association’s website, https://www.sdcard.org.

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