Ignosi Wins Rep. Brooks’s (IN-05) 2019 Congressional App Challenge

Rep. Susan Brooks has named two Fishers students as the winner of the Congressional App Challenge in Indiana\’s 5th district. Hamilton Southeastern High School’s Preston McCrary and Arnav Mehra submitted Ignosi, an app that provides students with free tutoring.

When asked they were passionate about creating a tutoring app the students replied, “Our source of inspiration for this application comes from the numerous students we have observed struggling in classes; due to either not knowing how to find a free tutor for their specific subject, or not having the time to wait for being assigned one through a school organization. These issues urged us to develop an app where students could easily find and contact tutors across the nation.” They hope to encourage other students to better their communities by using their computer science skills.  

Over 10,000 students registered for the 2019 Congressional App Challenge. These students created and submitted 2,177 functioning apps, marking the end of the most successful Congressional App Challenge to date. All told, 304 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 48 states, Puerto Rico, the Mariana Islands, and Washington, D.C.

The CAC is an 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. The non-profit Internet Education Foundation provides the CAC with supplemental staffing and support. In the five years of the Congressional App Challenge, the program has yielded 1134 App Challenges across 48 states. Thousands of functional apps have been created by over 25,000 students, and participant demographics surpass all industry diversity metrics.