Harrisburg - U.S. Representative Scott Perry (PA-10) announced Mechanicsburg student, Shubhankar Baliyan, as the winner of the 2019 Congressional App Challenge for Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District. The Cumberland Valley High School student designed an app called “ExciteMath” to help elementary students practice basic math skills in a fun and engaging way.
“Shubhankar demonstrated great creativity, proficiency, and functionality in ExciteMath but, more importantly, he thought of others when designing his app and chose to give back to his community by helping children struggling with mathematics. I am honored to name Shubhankar the winner of Congressional App Challenge for PA’s 10th District,” said Congressman Perry. “The Congressional App challenge is a great way to inspire middle and high school students to explore coding, STEM subjects, and careers in computer science.”
When asked why he was passionate about creating an app that promotes math education, Baliyan said, “Mathematics has always been my favorite subject in school. One aspect of math I struggled with when I was in elementary school was mental math. I could not add or subtract numbers in my head as quickly as I would have liked. This app is aimed to improve the mental math skills of students like the former me.”
The Congressional App Challenge started in 2015 to engage students in congressional districts across the Country to learn code and submit original apps to the competition. The winner is selected by a panel of experts, and the winning app from Pennsylvania’s 10th District will be on display in the U.S. Capitol for one year. Between 2015 and 2018, the Congressional App Challenge inspired 14,000 students across 48 states to program an app. In 2019, over 10,000 students registered for the competition and submitted 2,177 fully functioning apps.
