Engineer the Future: Educators Can Apply for the Arduino Scholarship Now!
Washington, D.C – The Congressional App Challenge and Qualcomm Incorporated today announced Engineering the Future: Educator Arduino Scholarship, a new national initiative to expand access to physical computing tools for middle and high school students participating in the Congressional App Challenge. Through the program, educators across the country can apply for sets of Arduino® UNO™ Q boards, enabling students to build hands-on, hardware-enabled projects that connect software to real-world applications, from environmental monitoring and health tracking to assistive technology and community-based solutions.
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. acquired Arduino in October 2025 to empower students, educators, and developers by facilitating access to its unmatched portfolio of edge technologies and products. The Arduino UNO Q is a newly released board that helps enable students to bring code into the physical world. This is done by connecting software to sensors, lights, motors, and other components, supporting interactive projects that help students design, test, and iterate real systems while learning core hardware and coding skills.
Many students participating in the Challenge have strong ideas and technical ability but limited access to hardware. This scholarship is designed to address that gap by placing tools directly in student hands where educators can guide them from concept through working prototypes. The scholarship prioritizes under-resourced and rural schools, expanding access to opportunities that allow students to build, test, and iterate on real systems using Edge AI. Arduino boards are also heavily used in industries such as automotive, aerospace and IOT to help prototype and commercialize products, providing the foundation for students to gain highly valuable skills that directly transfer into industry.
The program is delivered in collaboration with the Congressional App Challenge, the official coding competition of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the largest high school coding competition in the country. Each year, the Challenge engages nearly 14,000 students across all 50 states, and all Arduino UNO Q boards awarded through this scholarship will support students or teams preparing to submit an app, ensuring the tools are tied directly to real projects and outcomes.
“Students don’t just want to code, they want to build things that work in the real world,” said Joe Alessi, Program Director of the Congressional App Challenge. “What we see every year is that when students have access to tools like Arduino, the quality and ambition of their projects change completely. This partnership collaboration with Qualcomm gives more students that opportunity and brings hardware into classrooms that otherwise wouldn’t have it.”
Members of Congress will have the opportunity to recognize participating schools and educators in their districts, highlight student projects that incorporate both software and hardware, and engage directly with classrooms through visits and local events, strengthening the connection between local innovation and national priorities around technology and workforce development.
As part of the initiative, select Congressional App Challenge alumni will share examples of how they have used Arduino boards in their own projects, from dorm-room automation and smart plant monitors to assistive tools and sensor-based systems, offering practical examples that show what is possible with accessible hardware and giving students a clear starting point for their own ideas. Throughout the academic year, Qualcomm and the Congressional App Challenge will also highlight participating classrooms through local and regional media, school visits, and short video features focused on what students are building and how they are approaching real-world problems.
Applications for the Educator Arduino Scholarship are open now, supporting a new generation of builders preparing to define the next era of U.S. innovation. The program addresses a growing need as more student projects incorporate real-world data, sensors, and AI-enabled features, while many classrooms still lack access to the hardware required to support that work. Awardees will be notified in August, and Arduino UNO Q boards will be distributed shortly thereafter. Students supported through this program will be preparing submissions for the 2026 Congressional App Challenge, with a submission deadline of October 26, 2026 at 12:00 PM ET.
Educators can learn more about the scholarship and apply below!
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