AURA wins Rep. Young Kim’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 39th District
Rep. Young Kim has named Diya Sreedhar from Troy High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 39th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of AURA, the student said, “Recently, a very close relative of ours passed away suddenly due to an aggressive brain tumor. My family and I were shocked, and we didn’t know how to handle his end-of-life care. We weren’t sure how long our relative would survive, or how severe his disease progression would be. When my family members were looking for this information, there was no single source we could turn to. I designed my app to bring together all the necessary information in one place. I believe many families go through this same scenario, and I hope my app will bring some clarity to this very sensitive but important topic.
My ultimate goal for this app is to provide the community with direct and immediate access to their health care analysis, enabling them to plan their medical future. Without having to go through expensive hospital software and legal gateways, patients can be diagnosed and offered treatment from a convenient mobile app. This software is also a second opinion to the doctor’s initial analysis, reducing the risk of misdiagnosis and making advice for medical treatment extremely easy to access.”
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.
The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.