Daniel Vidakovich, a 2002 University alumnus, is a finalist in Google's Project 10^100.

The competition, which Google has been holding over the past year, sought to find ideas that will "change the world by helping as many people as possible" in honor of the company's 10-year anniversary, according to the project's Web site, Project10tothe100.com.

Competitors submitted over 150,000 project ideas, and on Sept. 24, 16 were selected to be finalists. The finalists are competing for up to five slots and $10 million in funding from Google. The public can vote for their favorite ideas on the Web site until Oct. 8.

Vidakovich's project focuses on making a free, Web-based college program through his nonprofit organization, Innovative in Education. In addition to the funding from Google, Vidakovich said his project would be funded by targeted advertising online.

If implemented, the project would provide accredited undergraduate degree programs free of charge. Vidakovich said the University's online college program, Global Campus, got him thinking about different ideas.

"Given the state of Global Campus, it wasn't working as well as it could have, and I was thinking of a potential alternative," Vidakovich said. "For me, ideas are easy."

He said the project challenged him to think about the well-being of other people.

Eric Loth, professor in Engineering, said the program would help in less developed countries.

"There would be even more interest overseas if it would be a program that would be internationally known," Loth said.

Loth said another team of University affliates were also named finalists in the program with an idea about promoting health monitoring and data analysis. The team is comprised of three graduate students: Iiker Bayer, Onur Ozyesil and Taanil Ozkan.

Vidakovich said he drew inspiration from MIT OpenCourseWare, iTunesU and Flat World Knowledge, which are resources that provide free educational content on the Internet.

Vidakovich said he was part of the ROTC program at the University and worked as an officer on a naval submarine for five years. He said he received encouragement from U.S. Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., for his free online college idea.

According to the project's Web site, an advisory board at Google will select up to five projects to fund using results from the online vote. Afterward, the board will begin a process to determine the organizations best suited to implement the ideas. Innovative in Education could be one of them.

Christina Ciardiello, senior in LAS, said she believed taking courses solely online would eliminate some of the benefits of living on a college campus. She added that she was unsure if the project could be successful.

"It's a great idea in theory, but I'm not sure how it could work," Ciardiello said.

She said she was new to the idea of Google's competition, but said she had more interest in other finalist's ideas involving health or the environment.

"Education is important, but the environment impacts everyone," she said.

Sarah Klaiber, sophomore in Education, said she was open to the project.

"I think it's a great idea, especially nowadays with all the financial trouble in the country," Klaiber said. "A lot of people can't afford college who want to go and have the capability to get a degree."

The 16 finalists' ideas represent a set of 16 themes. Instead of picking individual idea submissions from the thousands of entries, Google pooled them into 16 goals, from building better banking tools to organizing the world's urban data.

"This is a huge step toward an idea that only a handful of us thought was possible," Vidakovich said on his Web site. "But we still need the capital to get it going."