Edge(u)cation wins Rep. Chris Pappas’ 2025 Congressional App Challenge in New Hampshire’s First District

When asked what inspired the creation of Edge(u)cation, Eric Buehler said, “I’m motivated by a simple question: Could a personalized, portable AI tutor transform education and improve outcomes for students in disadvantaged communities? Modern AI models are powerful but usually locked behind paywalls or cloud infrastructure, excluding the very learners who stand to benefit most.

“The idea for Edge(u)cation came from a simple question: what happens to learning when the lights go out? While AI learning tools were becoming popular, they relied on cloud connectivity and constant data streaming. These systems were inaccessible to students in rural or disadvantaged regions, where the internet can be slow, expensive, or completely unavailable. Generally, modern AI models are powerful but often locked behind paywalls or cloud infrastructure, excluding the very learners who stand to benefit most. I saw an opportunity to bridge that divide by creating a private, offline AI tutor that could run entirely on a phone.

“Developing Edge(u)cation was a deeply technical challenge. I realized that to make a fully offline AI tutor possible, I’d need to grapple with the challenge of fitting the AI model on the phone. Existing tools couldn’t handle large multimodal models efficiently on mobile hardware, so I created my own inference framework from scratch: mistral.rs, a new engine that runs complex models on-device with only a few gigabytes of RAM. It took almost a year of research, coding, and optimization, but the result proved that advanced AI can operate completely offline.

“Another source of inspiration was my interest in education equity and multilingual accessibility. Many AI systems focus on English, leaving behind billions of learners who speak other languages. To counter this, I made sure to design the entire interface to support over 140 languages and adapt seamlessly to any region.

“Finally, this project reflects my belief that AI should empower people, not depend on corporations or constant connectivity. Whether it’s a student in rural New Hampshire or a refugee studying, everyone deserves the ability to learn, create, and explore knowledge on their own terms.

“Building Edge(u)cation showed me that with creativity and persistence, even a single developer can make advanced AI accessible to anyone, anywhere.”