Congressman Schiff Announces Winners of 2023 30th Congressional District App Challenge
Today, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) announced the winners of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge.
Established by the House in 2013 to promote STEM and computer-based skills, the Congressional App Challenge is open to all middle and high school students who live in or attend school in Schiff’s district.
“The use of technology has become omnipresent in our daily lives – and especially for students, who in our post-pandemic world now rely on a variety of online platforms to do everything from submitting assignments, to planning their schedules, to tracking their academic and personal goals. The demands on our young people have never been greater but, of course, they never cease to amaze us by coming up with creative, cutting-edge solutions all on their own,” said Schiff. “The winners of this year’s competition have once again demonstrated a tremendous ability to channel their unique challenges into inspiration, by creating apps that will help them and their peers reach their potential inside and outside the classroom. I’m tremendously proud of every participant in this year’s challenge and cannot wait to see where their talents take them.”
Marlborough School’s Priscilla Ho won first place for her app “ShopGreen,” which is designed to curb impulse buying and decrease the carbon footprint from consumers' Amazon deliveries. Nicolas Donaghue, Ryan Frankel, David Kahdian and Devon Li from Crescenta Valley High School took second place for their app “FactCheckApp,” which is designed to check the veracity of verbal statements in real time through text transcription. Burbank High School’s David Hadi took third place for his app “Clear,” which informs users of their carbon footprint and ways they can minimize it.
Dr. Anjali Tripathi, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, served as this year’s judge.
More information about the 2023 winners and their submissions can be found below:
FIRST PLACE: PRISCILLA HO - SHOPGREEN
Priscilla Ho is a 9th grade student at Marlborough School in Los Angeles. Her app, ShopGreen is a platform designed to curb impulse buying and decrease the carbon footprint from consumers' Amazon deliveries.
ShopGreen’s Google Chrome Extension prompts users to save items to the ShopGreen app instead of buying them immediately. In the “Shopping List” section of the app, users may search for specific items in their list and edit their list. Later, when users decide which items they would like to purchase, they may simply transfer those items to their Amazon cart with a few clicks. Additionally, the app allows individuals to create and monitor monthly goals regarding the amount of money they spend on Amazon, the number of purchases they make, and the number of delivery trips their purchases entail. The app also contains links to environmental news stories.
Click here to watch Priscilla Ho’s demo of ShopGreen.
SECOND PLACE: NICHOLAS DONAGHUE, RYAN FRANKEL, DAVID KAHDIAN AND DEVON LI - FACTCHECKAPP
Nicolas Donaghue, Ryan Frankel, David Kahdian and Devon Li are 12th grade students at Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta. Their app, FactCheckApp, is a platform that can be used to check the veracity of verbal statements in real time through text transcription.
FactCheckApp uses artificial intelligence to compare statements found in videos and live-streamed content to information found online. The app can fact-check information from more than 50 languages and translate the information into English.
FactCheckApp transmits a request to the app’s server to create a transcript. The app then reviews claims that have been marked as significant by either the user and/or artificial intelligence. The app’s artificial intelligence then verifies the information it can fact-check without the Internet. It also checks the remaining key information by comparing that data to internet sources.
Click here to watch Nicolas, Ryan, David, and Devon’s demo of FactCheckApp.
THIRD PLACE: DAVID HADI – CLEAR
David Hadi is a 9th grade student at Burbank High School in Burbank. His app, Clear, is a platform that informs users of their carbon footprint and ways they can minimize it.
On Clear, users can login to the platform to calculate their carbon footprint and receive a newsletter to obtain recent news about climate change. To calculate users’ carbon footprint, the app asks users about their weekly commutes, food consumption, and household utility consumption. The app then provides artificial-intelligence-generated tips for ways in which users can decrease their carbon footprint. The tips are unique to the answers that users provide to their weekly lifestyle questions in the carbon footprint calculation process.
Click here to watch David Hadi’s demo of Clear.