QuickQuill wins Rep. Judy Chu’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 28th District
Rep. Chu has named Qinzhi Li, an 11th grader at Arcadia High School, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 28th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of QuickQuill, the student said, “All the existing document solutions target general purposes; they are suitable for general use, but the difficulty arises when writing documents related to the STEM field. Complex mathematical equations are almost impossible to type on Google Docs and Microsoft Word, and sometimes, the overwhelming features offered by these general-purpose editors can be confusing and inefficient. One of the most commonly used formats to write a research paper is LaTeX, but it often comes with a very steep learning curve, face rendering issue, and is time-consuming. I often find myself staying up to type my projects in LaTeX just to get weirdly rendered documents. In fact, I’m not the only one facing these issues; my teachers are using images to display math equations on their documents, and the work of copying images and pasting can be tedious and time-consuming. This makes me wonder, what if there is an editor that allows editing these types of documents with ease? QuickQuill Editor is my solution, a completely web-based editor with every feature that can be accessed by keybinds and performance.”
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.