Intelligent Plant Watering System wins Rep. Madeleine Dean’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Fourth District

Rep. Madeleine Dean has named Sreekara Dandibhotla from Methacton High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Fourth District.

When asked what inspired the creation of Intelligent Plant Watering System, the student said, “Climate change is impacting the weather patterns causing hurricanes and droughts that severely impact farming. By 2050, the world’s population will reach 9.9 Billion. This increase in population will put a lot of stress on farming to produce food to feed the world. As we all know, growing crops needs a lot of water and irrigation systems. Properly utilizing the limited resources in nature is extremely important to maintaining sustainability, and conserving water, a precious commodity, is a part of the solution.”

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.