Bridgewater Student Creates App, Wins 1st Place In NJ-7 Congressional Challenge

BRIDGEWATER, NJ — Bridgewater-Raritan Middle School student Arya Vaidya won first place in the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, announced Congressman Tom Malinowski.

Vaidya created an application called OurVote which allows users to explore legislation in Congress and engage in discussion with the other members of the OurVote community. (See his video of the app below)

Locally, second place went to Angelina Huang and Isabella Huang of Watchung for their app Vax Vault and third place to Ryan Rana of Warren for his app QuickEstimate.

Winners were selected based their decisions on the students’ computer programming skills, creativity, and implementation of concept by a panel of judges.

"The winners of this year’s Congressional App Challenge showed exceptional creativity and an understanding of how tech can make our lives better," said Malinowski. "These particular students aren’t just using code to do cool things, but are using it to help people. I’m really proud to represent Arya, Angelina, Isabella, and Ryan in Congress, and I can’t wait to see what their future holds."

The challenge was launched by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2015 to encourage middle and high school students nationwide to participate in the STEM field and hone their coding and computer science skills.

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