Snap Cook wins Rep. Jim Himes’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Connecticut’s Fourth District
Rep. Himes has named Richard Xiong of Trumbull High School and Tianyi Huang of American High School as the winners of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Connecticut’s Fourth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Snap Cook, the students said, “During my childhood, my mother’s exceptional “Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-Fry” dish always fascinated me. It was more than a dish; it was a token of her love and care. However, there were occasions when I noticed unused tomatoes and eggs decaying in the fridge and eventually being discarded. This unnecessary waste deeply concerned me, particularly against the backdrop of food scarcity worldwide.
As ChatGPT skyrocketed in popularity, a thought sparked in me: Could we create a convenient tool to discover recipes from just a picture of ingredients, thereby avoiding wastage? This concept seemed even more critical when we found that, according to the United Nations, roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tons, gets lost or wasted. At the same time, about 690 million people still suffer from hunger.
To address this issue, we created Snap Cook, an app that bridges the gap between visible ingredients and potential recipes. In doing so, Snap Cook reduces food waste, promotes resourceful cooking, and offers greater convenience than manually inputting all the ingredients.”
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.