Former Waitaki Boys High School pupil Michael Trengrove is off to Egypt in July to represent New Zealand at the world finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup.
Mr Trengrove (27) was the team leader for Team Think, from Lincoln University, which won the New Zealand competition. The other members were Asa Wong and Graham Smart.
More than 250,000 students from 100 countries entered the student technology competition, which asked young programmers, artists and designers to use technology to solve the world's most pressing challenges.
Team Think devised a programme for tablet computers that eliminated the need for basic literacy to understand lessons or instructions.
They hoped to take the prototype to developing countries that had underused computers due to literacy issues.
