Four Naperville students are headed to Washington, D.C. next month after being selected as winners in the nationwide Congressional App Challenge.
The competition, run by the House of Representatives, asked students to create and submit an app that addresses a problem. Winners are chosen from each congressional district.
Students make app to educate and promote sustainability
Neuqua Valley High School students Steven He and Kundan Baliga collaborated with Naperville North students Aiden Xie and Kyle Wang to make EcoSense, an app focused on educating people about climate change and helping them make environmentally friendly choices.
The four friends learned about the competition by chance and were motivated to create the app after noticing increasing changes in the climate and the effects of natural disasters in Illinois. He said the tornado that hit Naperville in 2021 was one of his inspirations for EcoSense.
“Looking at that kind of made me realize that environmental awareness and understanding of climate change is something that people really overlook,” said He.
The technology behind EcoSense
The app, which also has a website, features several tools to inform users about environmental issues and guide decision-making about recycling.
“Our app has three main features. These are the eco forum, the news feature, and also the garbage classifier…Essentially what it does is it’s a camera, and when you take a picture of something, it’ll tell you if it’s something you can recycle or something that you would throw away,” said He.
They utilized several pieces of software during the coding process, including programming that helps the app source global environmental news articles.
“I was able to integrate a news API. An API basically lets you get information from external sources. So we were able to get all of these environmental news sources and compile it into one app for everyone to see,” said Baliga.
They also used Google AI technology to make the camera feature identify recyclables.
“We used something called Next.js. and that was just basically a framework to deal with some of the logic behind the app’s functions,” said Xie. “And then also Google Gemini, which is what, sort of runs the garbage classifier…utilizing your phone’s camera app, and then uses Google Gemini image detection to tell you how to classify the garbage and how to deal with it.”
Creating a more eco-friendly community
They felt it was important to add a forum feature to the app so that users can discuss the environment and suggest ways to reduce their carbon footprint.
“It’s sort of a local community that we plan on having where people from similar areas can talk about environmental issues. For example, ‘The Riverwalk is heavily polluted right now. We could use a volunteer cleanup effort.’ So, it’s more so about connecting people within our local region together to make a positive change,” said Wang.
Overall, the app took the students about two months to finish. Afterward, they sent in a video submission showcasing the prototype.
Recognition and future goals for EcoSense
Xie said he was thrilled when he found out they were selected as the winners for Illinois’ 14th Congressional District.
“We were all pretty happy. It was kind of unexpected that we would win. Originally we thought that a lot of other ideas maybe might have been a bit better and that our execution wasn’t that great, but we were overall really satisfied with how our end product came up,” said Xie
Earlier this year, Illinois Representative Lauren Underwood visited the students at their schools to present them with certificates of recognition.
Next month, they will present EcoSense at the #HouseOfCode national science fair in Washington, D.C., and are working on fine-tuning the app ahead of the event.
They hope to someday make EcoSense available for download in app stores. But until then, they said they’re proud to have created something that could help better the planet.
“We spent so much time on this, and for it to come to fruition, that was really great,” said Baliga.
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