UHS wins Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 11th District
Rep. Nancy Pelosi has named Rahul Hira of San Francisco University High School as the winner of the 2025 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 11th District. Their app UHS is a platform for San Francisco University High School students that centralizes announcements, clubs, events, lunch menus, and school links.
When asked what inspired the creation of UHS, Rahul Hira said, “National data shows that students are feeling less connected at school. The percentage of high schoolers who said they felt close to people at their school dropped from about 62% in 2021 to 55% in 2023. There is less involvement in extracurriculars as well, meaning fewer students are participating in school beyond academics. I started noticing the same thing at my school. It wasn’t that people didn’t care, but that everything was scattered. You’d hear about something only after it happened. On top of that, students got flooded with irrelevant emails from clubs they weren’t even in and never knew what was for lunch. I wanted to see if technology could actually fix that. That’s why I built the UHS App: a single place where students can see what’s happening and stay in the loop without getting overwhelmed. It started as a small project, but it quickly became something that could genuinely make student life easier and bring our community a little closer together.”
The 2025 Congressional App Challenge marked another record-setting year for the program. A total of 394 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives hosted App Challenges in their congressional districts, the highest level of participation in the program’s history. More than 13,800 students from across the country participated, submitting over 4,600 original apps focused on real-world challenges ranging from health and accessibility to education, sustainability, and civic engagement.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives that encourages middle school and high school students to learn to code, explore computer science, and build practical technology solutions for their communities. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and winning teams are invited to showcase their projects to Members of Congress, staff, and industry leaders at the annual #HouseOfCode celebration on Capitol Hill.
The Challenge is proudly bipartisan and reflects a shared commitment to expanding access to STEM education and preparing the next generation of American innovators for the future workforce. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from the Broadcom Foundation, AWS, Infosys Foundation USA, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2026 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.