Launch Log wins Rep. Morgan Griffith’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Virginia’s Ninth District
Rep. Morgan Griffith has named Ian Rhudy, a 12th Grader at Tazewell High School, as the winner of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in Virginia’s Ninth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Launch Log, the student said, ”The field of STEM is my passion, and I love to work on personal projects in every branch of STEM. Over this summer, I wanted to start a project that was bigger than my projects before. I wanted to start something in which I had to learn something completely new, as well as combine my knowledge of many different fields into one grand product. Thus, when I heard of the Congressional App Challenge from my mentors at CGI, it seemed like the perfect front for my STEM project. Because the challenge was centered around apps that would help the government, I naturally began to think of NASA and how it studies the atmosphere using projectiles such as rockets. I could build a rocket that used an Arduino sensor to measure atmospheric data just like NASA, and my app could be a way of viewing this sensor data to visualize the flight. In this way, I could learn about a completely new field of STEM, model rocketry, as well as apply my skills in Arduino circuitry and Python programming to make the ultimate STEM project that I had wanted.”
The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent.
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, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.