PCPosture wins Rep. Judy Chu’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 27th District

When asked what inspired the creation of PCPosture, the student said, ”My daily hours spent in front of a computer has drastically increased, especially with the onset of the global pandemic. This is further exacerbated by the fact that I focus on computer science and nearly all of my work involves use of a computer. Good posture is something that matters for both short and long term lumbar spine health, and especially more so for me, as I do weightlifting on the side.

One of the classes I took in my school, called Engineering Design and Development, involved solving a problem that matters to you; but to solve it, you first needed to prove that it existed. I knew beforehand that posture mattered while sitting, and our group set out to find how much. We came up with the following problem statement:

Back pain is extremely common among the population, with the number of people in a community experiencing it up to 80% and increasing at an average rate of 2.5% year over year. Due to muscle fatigue, soreness, bad ergonomics, or general inability to hold proper posture, visual display screen users often end up sitting with bad posture. Many research studies show a strong correlation between computer usage and neck pain: 4 hours a day without a break is associated with neck and shoulder pain, while a total of 21 or more hours a week in front of a computer is positively correlated with back pain. Bad posture is also known to result in stretched spinal ligaments, increased blood pressure, lack of blood flow, bladder problems, heartburn, headaches, depression, stress, digestive issues, poor breathing, herniated disks, and general pain in the neck, legs, and shoulders.

Given that I knew my posture while sitting was both poor and that doing so affected my health to such a degree, I set out to create a solution. My goal was to not only reduce my back pain, but to also increase my knowledge of computer vision and neural networks.”