Medha Gupta sometimes felt worried about making the 20-minute walk from the corner where the school bus dropped her off to her home in Herndon,Va.—especially during the colder months in winter.
Her mother,Divya Gupta had a suggestion:write an app.She was half-kidding,but Medha didn't take the challenge lightly.So she set out to work.
The result was Safe Travel,an app designed by Medha to help walkers feel more secure when they are travelling alone.Using the iPhone,a person can program it to send a warning to someone he or she trusts if he or she fails to arrive at a destination within a certain time.
It was the first iOS app that Medha had created.While she didn't think much would come from the project,her effort caught the eye of judges for the annual Congressional App Challenge,who selected her as the winner for Virginia's 10th District.
The App Challenge is designed to encourage students to consider careers in science,technology,engineering,and math by experimenting with coding and computer science.Winning students are invited to attend a reception on Capitol Hill in April and also received $250 in Amazon Web Service credits.
Medha said it took her about 40 hours to design,program and test the app.As for her next app?Medha's not certain.She temporarily has her app-development ambitions on hold because she's busy teaching herself artificial intelligence to help deal with improper words on social media platforms.Yes,she knows that there are teams of engineers probably doing the same thing.But she figures it can't hurt her own part,too.
"If we see something wrong with the world,we should do something about it," she said."After all,the only one stopping us from doing something is ourselves."
