Tulio wins Rep. Donald Norcross’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in New Jersey’s First District

Rep. Donald Norcross has named Karina Gupta, Armaan Gupta, and Gia Gupta from Cherry Hill East as the winners of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in New Jersey’s First District.

When asked what inspired the creation of Tulio, the students said, “In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were struck by the impacts that the virus had on virtually all of the foundations of our world: the global economy, relationships, and most prominently, health. The health and well-being of our world was targeted, and we wanted to find a way where people could have an easily accessible way to receive healthcare without fears of cost or anything that takes away from our universal right of an adequate standard of living. In short, we wanted to create something that was needed, and in our current situation, we knew that Tulio could be a solution. We have seen the fear that sickness fosters and the mental-health consequences that are a subsequent result of being ill. All of us globally have seen in the past year, the toll that illness and pain-ridden lives can have on our world. Yet, as the world begins to return to normal, and the focus is not on those with illnesses, Tulio can give them a voice and a chance to live, not suffer, live, with something that provides for them.”

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.