Air Guardian wins Rep. Sheila Jackson’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 18th District

When asked what inspired the creation of Air Guardian, the student said, “Solving global warming. When said in those terms, the challenge of addressing climate change seems like a daunting, almost impossible task with complexities that are difficult to even grasp. To meaningfully take action on such a large problem, I immediately began anchoring to data. Far too often, the discourse around climate change revolves around large macro-level calls to action and emotional appeals. When ideating around how to implement a solution, I felt that an inverse approach focusing on micro-level, data-led solutions would allow a populace to see the immediacy of the problem we face. Additionally, working with a variety of data allowed me to truly understand the scope of this problem and add concrete information to truly isolate the root cause of environmental damage. As such, I believe that using technology to visually represent pollutant data in the form of a mobile application is the ideal methodology to address this chosen area of focus: air pollution. However, when constructing this application, I realized that simply presenting the data to users, while effective, needed to be paired with concrete medical information to empower users to take matters into their own hands and decide for themselves and their families how to address the levels of pollution in their area. As such, this app combines medical science along with technology to truly construct a real, and use-functional solution. This combination is especially powerful as the technology puts science at the fingertips of users via a mobile application. Science on its own is difficult to digest for the average person and technology on its own becomes unfocused without material information to support it. The merging of these two ideas within STEM allows for the clear articulation of science to the average user while encouraging interaction via an engaging application. Through these various methods, I was thoroughly inspired by global warming to solve such a crisis.”