The winner of the Malta Internet Foundation prize for 2012 is Stefan Scerri, a recent graduate of the BSc ICT (Hons) degree at the University of Malta who is currently a business applications developer at iMovo Limited.

The prize was awarded for innovative work describing or demonstrating a mobile and location-based application that profits from use of the internet and addresses a need that is particularly relevant to the Maltese context.

Mr Scerri’s submission, which was his final year project, is entitled A Smart Parking Advisor using Mobile Technology. It addresses in-car parking scenarios in which a user seeks advice over mobile technology on the availability of parking places in different car parks. The solution uses machine-learning techniques to acquire a predictive model of car park occupancy and also incorporates learned user profiles so that the users are directed to parking slots that are most likely to suit their particular timetables.

The Malta Internet Foundation offers this annual prize in support of academic work making a significant contribution to internet technologies. The prize in 2013 will be awarded to students submitting innovative work describing or demonstrating systems that profit from use of the internet and address a need that is particularly relevant to the Maltese context.

Details of the 2013 edition of the prize have already been published and are available at www.nic.org.mt/go/2013prize.

The Malta Internet Foundation, also known as NIC (Malta), was officially launched in January 1999, and is responsible for managing the .mt top-level domain for Malta. The mission of the foundation also includes activities to promote use of the internet in Malta.