Benicia High students Benji Ryujin (right) and Kai Rush were selected as the 2019 App Challenge winners for the Fifth Congressional District for their app, Space Trace.

Staff Report

Congressman Thompson announces 2019 App Challenge winners; Winners selected by local tech experts

Washington – Tue. Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-05) announced that Kai Rush and Benji Ryujin have been selected as the 2019 App Challenge winners for the Fifth Congressional District for their app Space Trace. Kai and Benji are seniors at Benicia High School and competed against more than a dozen other app designers in this year’s challenge. They were selected by a group of local technology experts.

“Each year I am thrilled to see so many great ideas and innovative designs from our local student app designers and I am excited to congratulate Kai and Benji as this year’s winning team for their app called Space Trace,” said Thompson. “Their innovative design will be on display throughout the upcoming year in the U.S. Capitol and featured on the House website, proudly representing our district to the nation. Congratulations to Kai and Benji and all the incredible and innovative students who competed in this year’s challenge!”

The Congressional App Challenge (CAC) is the most prestigious prize in student computer science. Participation in the challenge has grown exponentially and has reached underserved, diverse, and rural student populations.

“The purpose of this app is to teach children how to draw and recognize the 12 different zodiac constellations in our night sky,” said Ryujin, who often used to just gaze at the stars as a child. “The more I learned about the stars, the more curious I actually became. I wanted to make this app for those curious aspiring kids, just like me.”

The students used block coding to create the app and the main screen is composed of a pen, eraser and shapes. From there, you choose which of the 12 constellations you want to attempt at drawing and proceed to draw the constellation on the screen.

“All in all, I really want kids just to have fun drawing these constellations,” said Ryujin. “And at the same time, learning them and putting these little things in their memory. So maybe next time when they look at the stars, they’ll smile because they know they see a little more than they saw the night before.”

The Congressional App Challenge is beginning to transform how Congress views computer science and STEM. Since the challenge was first announced, Congress’ mentions of computer science and coding have increased by 2,000 percent.

According to the CAC website, from 2016 to last year, apps submitted increased by 164 percent, while student participation increased from 2,160 to 5,229 in 47 states, up from 33. 222 members of Congress participated in the challenge in 2018.

Larger percentages of participants are African American, Hispanic or Native American as compared to Silicon Valley, over three times as much in some cases. Over 35 percent of CAC’s participants are women, compared to under 20 percent in the Silicon Valley workforce.

The annual House of Code — the new national science fair — brings CAC winners to the nation’s capital for a demo day, where students demonstrate their winning apps. Members of Congress connect with their student constituents and see firsthand the power of computer science.

The CAC provides a link between student constituent coders and their Representatives in Congress. With the support from their member of Congress, these students have produced apps that address problems locally, nationally, and globally .

You can visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=152&v=ivLrDgHYYkw&feature=emb_title to watch a video outlining the design and concept for the winning app and visit https://www.congressionalappchallenge.us/ to learn more about the annual Congressional App Challenge.

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