Some people write apps for fun. Others for cash.

Then there’s Wilson To, a 25-year-old University of California grad tyro who’s building an app to spin a Windows Phone in to a arms opposite disease. His target: malaria, that kills thousands of immature young kids in sub-Saharan Africa any year.

Today Microsoft awarded To and 3 alternative tyro groups operative on life-altering tech projects $ 75,000 to assistance them commercialize their work or take it to the subsequent theatre of development.

The awards, voiced this sunrise at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have been partial of the initial Imagine Cup Grants program—a latest three-year, $ 3 million appendage of the company’s renouned Imagine Cup tyro record competition, right away in the 10th year.

All of the winning projects voiced currently have been impressive—just take a demeanour at the Imagine Cup blog and you’ll see what I mean. One Croatian group used Kinect to assistance kids with intelligent palsy.  Combining Windows and a Wii-mote, a group from Jordan done it probable for people who have been inept to operate a mechanism and phone.

But, as we competence expect, the 2 winning projects involving Windows Phones quite held my eye.

The initial comes from Falcon Dev, a tyro group formed in Ecuador that’s operative on creation a Windows Phone interpret debate in to pointer denunciation for kids who have been conference impaired, something they’ve already completed on a Windows PC. The plan is called SkillBox—but we have to see the video to conclude how cold it unequivocally is.

And in the future there’s the Lifelens plan led by Wilson To.  Using a done to order app and a little lens scrounged from an aged CD player, he and his group have done it probable for a Windows Phone to diagnose malaria from a dump of blood. (The appendage lens can increase red red red red blood cells 350 times.) Watch the video next or check out this new Forbes press review for specifics. There have been already poor and correct red red red red blood tests for malaria available. But the group thinks a tech-based exam still has advantages: Lifelens is being written to map reliable cases and broadcast real-time formula to open illness workers, potentially assisting them lane malaria cases some-more effectively.

Next stairs for To and company: a snap-on box containing the micro-lens. They’re additionally formulation to control some-more lab tests this summer, followed by margin contrast someday later. As Business Week reported final year, To in the future hopes to have his app able of noticing alternative blood-borne scourges, such as sickle cell anemia.

“Malaria is only the beginning,” he told the magazine.