Cancer Awareness Hub wins Rep. Mike Lawler’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s 17th District
Rep. Lawler has named Bianca Jain, a ninth grader at Briarcliff High School, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s 17th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Cancer Awareness Hub, the student said, “From an early age, I have been participating in book related annual events, organized by our county’s amazing community librarian. Our community librarian has spent countless hours helping students practice and perform at book related events and competitions with passion. Recently, I got to know that our community librarian is diagnosed with cancer. This news shocked me and inspired me to enhance my knowledge on cancer causes and this topic so that I have better understanding from all aspects.
As a result of my learnings from publicly available resources such as CDC, NCI, etc. I realized that cancer is still viewed as a disease that is genetically passed from one generation to another. Not many people are aware that a lot of reasons for cancer lie in our daily lifestyle and are preventable. As per my understanding, the first step is awareness and taking measures that could lower risk of causing cancer. In the era of fast-moving technology, having quite-bite on the go is the new mantra. With that thought, I developed this app that could highlight if we are at higher risk or lower risk based on day-to-day lifestyle practices or products we use and provide some quick tips on measures that could be highly beneficial to all age groups in this fast paced lifestyle.
In this journey, I enhanced my own awareness and my family members too, about cancer causes and prevention measures. Apart from that, I explored and learnt more around technology stack used with respect to saving user response in underlying data tables.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
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. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. 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, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2024, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.