STEM students win House App Challenge

Tesla STEM freshman Apoorv Khandelwal — with contributions by freshman Ben Zabback — won the first annual Congressional Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Academic Competition, the House App Contest, for Washington's First Congressional District.

June 10, 2014 2:16 pm

Tesla STEM High School freshman Apoorv Khandelwal — with contributions by freshman Ben Zabback — won the first annual Congressional Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Academic Competition, the House App Contest, for Washington’s First Congressional District.

Their app, pocketEinstein, is an educational application to teach students about basic scientific and mathematical principles. The app includes the following: scientific calculator, base converter, SI unit converter, SI unit explanations and derivations, conceptual information on bases, significant figures and scientific notation and physics equations and concepts.

For more information about PocketEinstein, visit https://aprooro.github.io/pocketEinstein.

The Congressional STEM Academic Competition was designed to engage students’ creativity and encourage their participation in STEM education fields. Established by members of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2013, this competition is a nationwide event that allows high school students from across the country to compete by creating and exhibiting their software app for mobile, tablet or computer devices on a platform of their choice. Each congressional district selects winners.

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene’s office received 14 app submissions from 41 students attending two schools: STEM High School in Redmond and Timbercrest Junior High School in Woodinville.

There were four judges recruited from the tech industry: Jeff Brown, director of design for Kinect at Microsoft; Brian Dorsey, software engineer in developer relations at Google; Ken Pawlak, founder and CEO of Via 121, Inc. and Jason Pace, executive director of the Digital Future Lab at the University of Washington Bothell.

Judges scored the app submissions on a scale of 1-10 in four different categories: innovation, appeal factor, production quality and presentation. The total scores for all four categories were added together to determine the overall winner.

LWSD’s STEM students did very well. Team Dex Pix received the award for innovation and in addition to winning the overall competition, Team PocketEinstein received the awards for production quality and presentation. Their app will be posted on House.gov and be part of an exhibit anddisplay in Washington, D.C.