Flaurapedia wins Rep. Beth Van Duyne’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 24th District
Rep. Beth Van Duyne has named Michael Liu from Coppell High School – 9th Grade Campus (CHS9) as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Texas’s 24th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Flaurapedia, the student said, “The inspiration behind this project was the lack of identification for the plants in our surroundings whether it was on vacation or even a regular trip to the park. I also considered the consequences of the lack of information such as people being vulnerable to the potential hazards in their surroundings or simply being less informed about their ecosystem which can cause harm to them and the environment. This curiosity drove me to develop a lightweight mobile Android app that can identify a broad spectrum of greenery with incredible accuracy which can be accessed on the go.”
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.
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. 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, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.
The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.