Congratulations to ITAM team, responsible for developing the app KidZania, for winning the Samsung Smart TV Challenge powered by Telcel. The winning team is composed of students Miguel Ángel Casillas Maldonado (Computer Engineering), Álvaro Casillas Maldonado (Industrial Engineering), Cassandra Pratt Romero (Computer Engineering), Hugo Villegas González (Industrial Engineering and Mechatronic Engineering) and Juan Guillermo del Moral González (Computer Engineering). The support of Dr. Ana Lidia Franzoni, Director of Computer Engineering, was crucial for the development of the partnership between Samsung and our Institute. This app is a game forchildren with different characters and levels of difficulty.

The team KidZania won internal knockout and received several Samsung products (Smart TV, Galaxy S4, Smart Blu-Ray, and Smart Docking camera) and then was crowned overall winner among all participating universities. In recognition of the efforts and creativity of the winning team, and in order to promote the talents of young Mexicans and its approach to new technologies, Samsung will equip a laboratory at ITAM with brand products.

This is the first edition of the Samsung Smart TV Challenge, in which Samsung Electronics Mexico and Telcel will seek to encourage creativity and performance of young people in the areas of technology and innovation for new development platforms in universities. Samsung partnered with 22 participating brands (WWF-Telcel, ideas Telcel, Hot Nuts, Barcel, Comex, Samsonite, Palacio de Hierro, Comercial Mexicana, Mercedez Benz, Chevrolet, Vans, GMC, Huggies, OCESA, KidZania, Nuby, Sanborn, Gandhi, Sedema, K-box, and Vitacilina Metro) and four universities (ITAM, ITESM, ANAHUAC and UVM) to develop 22 apps.

From August to November, ITAM teams and other colleges worked closely with their assigned company at all times and received expert support for developing your app. ITAM students formed six teams who worked with the company Barcel, KidZania, WWF-Telcel, Palacio de Hierro, GMC and OCESA. This unique experience allowed students to learn about this technology for TV screens and get closer to working world.

All developed apps will be available on Samsung Apps Store apps for Samsung TVs, line 2013.