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Rep Anna Eshoo

Congressional App Challenge

We've announced the winners!

Grant Hough and Yanis Herne of Saratoga High School are the winners of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge for California's 16th Congressional District with their entry, Aletheia. You can read the announcement here

The Congressional App Challenge is completed for 2023, but read below for details on how you can participate in 2024. 

What is the Congressional App Challenge?

The annual Congressional Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Academic Competition, or the “Congressional App Challenge” is a competition designed to engage student’s creativity and encourage their participation in STEM education fields. Established by Members of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2013, Congresswoman Eshoo was the original co-chair of this competition and ran the pilot competition in 2014.

The Congressional App Challenge allows middle and high school students from across the country to compete by creating and exhibiting their software application, or “app,” for mobile, tablet, or computer devices on a platform of their choice. Throughout the competition period, participating students will be provided opportunities to engage with various STEM educational partners located within the community to mentor and assist them with their app development. The winners have their app displayed in the US Capitol Building and on House.gov for a year. Additional prizes may be announced at a later time.

Interested in participating?

For your reference, details on submitting a contest entry, the rules of the 2023 competition, and helpful programming resources can be found atCongressionalAppChallenge.us. All students entering the competition must first register and submit their entry by providing a YouTube or VIMEO video demo explaining their app and what they learned through the competition process. You can use any video-hosting site, but make sure to set the settings for your video to "public" for the judges to review.

Check to see if you’re eligible:

  • To be eligible to participate in the Congressional App Challenge, you must be a middle or high school student at the time of app submission. 
  • Students may register as individuals or as teams of up to four. No more than 4 students are allowed to form a team.
  • Students may compete in the district they reside in or the district they attend school in.
  • If competing as a team, at least two of the teammates must be eligible to compete in the district in which they are participating in.
  • Read the complete rules here.

Can’t wait?

You can pre-register for the 2024 Congressional App Challenge here. You can also find valuable resources on how to code and develop your app on the Congressional App Challenge website here

Need some inspiration? 

In addition to our winner Aletheia, you can review some of the other highly ranked entries from this year's Challenge below:

Tied for 2nd place:

  • Dear (Hudson Etkin and Kai Etkin)                                
  • Droplet (Tanuj Siripurapu)    
  • Wildfire Warden (Siddartha Daswani)               

3rd  Place: Homeless Heroes (Camille Chu and Colin Chu)

Honorable Mention:LocalGreens (Atulya Weise)

Congresswoman Eshoo now represents CA-16, but below are the previous winners for CA-18 which she was privileged to represent:

  • 2014 winner  – Team Trext (April Chien, Claire Huang, Jolena Ma and Wings Yeung)
  • 2015 winner – Team Mezzo  (Aimee An, Heejung Chung, Claire Huang)
  • 2016 winner –  Team Peer2Peer (Arnav Gudibande, Amar Ramachandran, and Anuv Gupta)
  • 2017 winner – Mere (Olivia Chang)
  • 2018 winner – A Smarter Insulin Pump (Anna Quinlan) 
  • 2019 winner - Uproot (Sidney Hough)
  • 2020 winner - SurveyHurricane (Audrey Ha)
  • 2021 winner - Cultive (Zeyneb Kaya)
  • 2022 winner - Signer (Adrit Rao).
 
Also, see here to check out all the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge nationwide.