RoboticsMuse wins Rep. Frank J. Mrvan’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Indiana’s First District
Rep. Frank J. Mrvan has named Josue Pedraza of Morton Senior High School as the winner of the 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Indiana’s First District. Their app RoboticsMuse is meant to serve as an educational hub for Robotics students, giving easy access to interactive lessons, community, and many other resources to help students get a better grasp on robotics-related topics.
When asked what inspired the creation of RoboticsMuse, Josue Pedraza said, “It has been a full year since I started FIRST Robotics, and I have gone through so many hurdles to get to where I am today in terms of knowledge and experience, the biggest one being a lack of information and the willingness of people to better train students. I know for a fact that thousands of students across the world have been and will continue to experience this issue. So now that I’ve been in the program for a year, I want to change that—to make not just FIRST but STEM education in general very easy to access. Then I had the idea of RoboticsMuse, a website/app that just showed you very simply how certain tasks are done and the ability to interact with a whole community of learners.”
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.