Friday, 21 December 2007

A team from The University of Western Australia has been shortlisted in the Google Earth “Build your Campus in 3D Competition”.

The UWA team is just one of three shortlisted, with the other finalists both teams from the University of Melbourne.

Launched by internet giant Google, the competition challenged university teams on both sides of the Tasman to recreate all or part of their universities so it could be viewed by people logging on to Google Earth.

The eight-member UWA team spent more than two months creating 28 3D models, which took in more than 56 buildings.

The team is led by the creators of the UWA Virtual Universe Project, Jay Jay Jegathesan, Manager of the School of Physics and two PhD students in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Chris Thorne and Wong Tzu Yen.

Other team members include undergraduate and postgraduate students from Computer Science, Engineering and Architecture: Evgeni Sergeev, Michael Huynh, Minh Tran, Bradley Curnow and Jonathan Knispel.

The prizes for being selected as finalists include an all-expenses paid trip to Google Australia's headquarters in Sydney, the opportunity to participate in a workshop with Google's 3D experts, to be one of only three universities in Australia and New Zealand to have a direct 3D presence on Google Earth, and online recognition.

The overall winner will be announced in February 2008 when the top three teams arrive at Google Australia headquarters. For more details visit the UWA Virtual Universe Project website: https://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/virtual/ or Google Earth website: https://earth.google.com/

Media references

Jay Jay Jegathesan (School of Physics) 61 8 6488 2740

0417 180 564

Simone Hewett / Sally-Ann Jones (UWA Public Affairs) 61 8 6488 7977
0420 790 097 / 0420 790 098

Tags

Channels
Awards and Prizes — Events — Media Statements — University News