Eagle Express wins Rep. Emilia Sykes’ 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Ohio’s 13th District
Rep. Emilia Sykes has named Kaxten McGrew, Bastian Nowak, and Luke Hinkelman of NIHF STEM High School as the winners of the 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Ohio’s 13th District. Their app Eagle Express is a digital reward management system built for their school’s PBIS initiative.
When asked what inspired the creation of Eagle Express, the students said, “Our school recently introduced Beak Bucks to encourage students, but the paper system had several problems. Students had to keep track of their Bucks, which was difficult unless they stored them in a folder they carried every day. If they left them at home, they had to remember to bring them back on prize days. There was also a risk of students mass-producing fake Bucks since the only security was a signature that was easy to forge. If you’ve read ‘Hard Luck’ from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, you know how simple forgery can be, with students printing fake school currency on colored sheets of paper. Teachers also had trouble remembering to distribute Beak Bucks consistently. We wanted to modernize the system with something fair, fast, and secure. Inspired by a web script our computer science teacher uses to track classroom entries via student IDs, we realized we could use similar technology for our vision. Beak Bucks makes rewards instant and transparent, motivating students while reducing teacher workload.”
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.