LifeCycle wins Rep. Donald Beyer’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Virginia’s Eighth District

Rep. Donald Beyer has named Ram Reddy, Eric Feng, Nurdin Hossain, and Ramya Reddy of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology as the winners of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Virginia’s Eighth District.

When asked what inspired the creation of LifeCycle, the students said, “We were inspired by the day-to-day problems we have when it comes to throwing away materials. While everyone knows that it is important to separate recyclables and items that will go to landfills, not everyone can actually afford recycling and trash pickup services. Additionally, not everyone is aware of the various ways some materials have to be disposed of — like how tires need to be dropped off at Recycling and Disposal Facilities, such as ones in I-66 and I-95 in Virginia, or how medicine can be dropped off at pharmacy chains, such as CVS or Walgreens. LifeCycle circumvents all of these issues by informing users of nearby disposal centers in a convenient way.”

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.