IBM Watson Competition Judges Weigh Student Innovations

Judges give competing teams their feedback at the IBM Watson Case Competition hosted at USC.

This student was one of several presenters who made pitches for their teams’ ideas during the competition.

A student from Team 2 takes the stage to outline her team’s ideas. Students were divided into 24 teams and given two days to come up with a new purpose for Watson, create a business plan and present it to a panel of judges.

Another team argues its point. The panel of judges that would make the final decisions included school officials, IBM executives and local businesspeople.

These five teams made it to the finals of IBM’s contest to offer ideas about the future of Watson.

The winning team, from right to left: Yingchao Lin, who studies electrical engineering economics/mathematics; Celine Di, who studies communications and Italian; Sophie Xu, who studies industrial science and engineering; Daniel Wang, a business administration major. The winning project focused on leveraging Watson to help lawyers with their cases.