PRISM wins Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s Eighth District
Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet has named Diya Ramakrishnan of Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy as the winner of the 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s Eighth District. Their app PRISM is a mixed-reality web application designed to assist surgeons and radiologists during the process of pancreatic surgery.
When asked what inspired the creation of PRISM, Diya Ramakrishnan said, “The recent passing of my grandfather due to pancreatic cancer inspired me to create this app. Due to the critical stage of pancreatic cancer, surgeons told him that conducting pancreatic surgery would be too risky. This led me to wonder why pancreatic surgery was so risky. Through the research that I conducted, I learned that pancreatic surgery is very risky due to how close the pancreas is to other organs and due to the fact that very small tumors are left undetected by CT scans. This inspired the basis of my application: develop a web app to detect all sizes of tumors from CT scans and develop a mixed reality app that can detect organs/blood in real-time during surgery (which is something that has not been developed before for pancreatic surgery). The novelty of the idea combined with my grandfather’s passing motivated me to complete this app and carry it out to completion. I hope that, in the future, I will be able to improve more on my app and make pancreatic surgery a much safer process.”
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.