NutriSmart wins Rep. Kathy Castor’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 14th District
Rep. Kathy Castor has named Shloke Patel from Hillsborough High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Florida’s 14th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of NutriSmart, the student said, “The inspiration for this app was the lack of activity in students; I experienced this issue firsthand, after elementary I no longer used to get as much exercise and it was important for me to figure out an effective diet plan to balance my health and school coursework. I wanted it to be easier for students to stay fit, because physical and mental health are related.”
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.