EvolutionHQ wins Rep. Yvette D. Clarke’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s Ninth District

When asked what inspired the creation of EvolutionHQ, George Crawford said, “Since 10th grade, I’ve developed a passion for coding—particularly web development. I learned the key languages: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But when I took Intro to Computer Science in the spring of my junior year, I became proficient in Python and grew to love the language. At the same time, I was taking General Biology, which was probably my favorite class at the time. Thus, I wanted to find some way to apply what I’d learned in biology to my web development and Python knowledge.

“One time, our biology teacher had us learn about phylogenetics by looking at images of insect species, writing down the traits that were and weren’t present in each species in a matrix table (also known as a ‘character matrix’), and drawing a phylogenetic tree (also known as an ‘evolutionary tree’) based on it. One of the most tedious parts of this process was counting up the number of differences in traits between each species; many students also found it quite difficult to understand how the matrix table’s data should be translated into a phylogenetic tree. As a result, I decided to make a website that could make phylogenetics more understandable to future biology students at my school—this led me to develop the ‘Explore Phylogenetics’ part of my website.

“However, I soon realized that I didn’t want to just stop at this feature. To further combine my love for coding and biology, I wanted to create an app that makes evolutionary biology as a whole more understandable and accessible to all high school biology students. Digital tools have proven to be very effective in helping teach STEM subjects and concepts. Digital tools also democratize learning as a whole, as well as assist teachers in getting their students to better understand important topics through visual aids, interactivity, and practice problems. I made EvolutionHQ to do exactly these things. Before fully developing it, I spoke with the biology teachers at my school about whether they’d find EvolutionHQ useful in their classrooms, to which they excitedly said yes. While continuing to create the app, I reached out to other biology teachers in the NYC area. As the interest in my website grew, so did my motivation to create a tool that they could truly utilize in class. I hope these teachers will find it useful, and I plan to reach out to other teachers in the future.”