Clarity wins Rep. Madeleine Dean’s 2024 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Fourth District
Rep. Madeleine Dean has named Ayaan Rege, Ambrose Cole, and Nobuhle Mpofu of The Hill School as the winners of the 2024 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Fourth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Clarity, the students said, “When we were brainstorming ideas for an app to make people’s lives just a bit easier, we first came up with a plethora of options. We talked to the few members of our school we could find with various impairments that affected their daily lives, but we ultimately found the inspiration for our app idea within our own team. Liam, a member of our team, suffers from extremely poor vision and color blindness that affects him daily in school and outside the classroom. While we’ve often laughed together about his constant need to ask about colors that seem obvious to others, he’s also experienced serious colorblindness, identified in early grade school when he struggled to properly identify colors while amongst his peers. After being diagnosed, Liam expressed frustration with modern color blindness glasses, seemingly helpful tools that have little positive effect on him. However, we knew that we could make a computational tool that would benefit Liam—taking photos and analyzing them to provide a colorblind vision assistant that is actually helpful. In addition, we were further inspired by the advent of generative AI. We viewed this tool as a potential asset, helping us to further the effectiveness of the app. The fusion of these formed a highly successful color blindness filter (tested on our own group members and others).”
This year’s Congressional App Challenge set new records, with an unprecedented 382 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions—surpassing the previous high of 374. An incredible 12,682 students from across the country participated, representing a growth of over 1,000 students compared to 2023. These talented students submitted an astounding 3,881 original applications, showcasing their creativity, passion for technology, and the limitless potential of America’s next generation of innovators. This surge in participation reflects the increasing excitement around STEM and highlights a bright future for American innovation.
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 the Broadcom Foundation, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2025, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.