Allergy Alert wins Rep. Madeleine Dean’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Fourth District
Rep. Dean has named Mayank Sengupta, a 12th grader at Spring-Ford Area High School, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Fourth District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Allergy Alert, the student said, “I was inspired to create this app to help people with food allergies, like myself. According to the Asthma and Allergy foundation of America, about 20 million people suffer from food allergies in the US alone. In addition, according to the CDC, food allergies lead to about 30,000 ER visits and 150-200 deaths per year. Knowing the suffering of food allergy victims, I thought I could create a webapp leveraging my Python and AI experience to advise people what they should and should not eat just by looking at their food. I also wanted to make sure it was a webapp to make it accessible to both Android and IOS users to allow people with a wide variety of mobile devices to use it. Though there may be separate tools to identify unknown foods and places to find ingredients on the internet, Allergy Alert is the first app of its kind, combining the two aspects together in one quick and convenient website.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
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. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. 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 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2024, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.