RevealTheIngredient wins Rep. Haley Stevens’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s 11th District
Rep. Haley Stevens has named Sanjana Duttagupta from Northville High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s 11th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of RevealTheIngredient, the student said, “Since the beginning of the pandemic, my family has used numerous disinfectant chemicals to clean the products we use on a daily basis. One day, after a quick google search, I discovered that some of the chemicals in the products I use every day, including disinfectant wipes and aerosol sprays, are carcinogens. This was an alarming discovery, and I worried that these chemicals were slowly harming my family. After learning this information, I wished there was an efficient way to check all of the ingredients in the numerous chemical products in my house. At the time, I was experimenting with XCode for fun. I realized that I could use what I knew about building apps to create a product that would help my family and many other people around the world. In a time when millions of families across the world have turned to disinfectant chemicals to protect themselves, it is especially important for people to know what is in the products they use and the best way to use them safely.”
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.