Iredell County Students on Winning Team

Governor Roy Cooper recently announced that North Carolina high school students from four schools have won the fourth annual Ready, Set, App! Competition. Students were tasked with designing and developing an android mobile application to solve a problem in their school or community for the contest.

“It is great to see North Carolina students work together and combine creativity with tech skills to develop apps that solve real-world problems,” Governor Cooper said. “Congratulations to the winning teams on their outstanding achievements.”

This year, students created 27 original apps. Eight finalist teams from across the state traveled to Lenovo headquarters in Morrisville to pitch their apps on a live stage for the chance to win prizes. Students from across the state presented their original app designs to a panel of business and tech-industry professionals as well as a large audience of educators, community leaders, family members and peers. The winning student teams were selected by a panel of experts after presenting their mobile applications. For a peek into the final competition click here.

The winning apps are:

• First place: TimeWise, a productivity and mindfulness app, developed by students from NC Virtual Public Schools (Iredell-Statesville, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and Pitt County Schools). Team members include Indu Gadiraju, Amy Lei, Arianna Lee and Paige Pan.
• Second place: Votable, an app that gives personalized voting and election information, developed by students from Atkins Academic and Technology High School in Forsyth County. Team members include Anthony Gudin, Tyler Eisenbraun, Caden Snyder and Saanvi Rao.
• Third place: Magnolia, a resource app for victims of domestic abuse, developed by students from Enloe High School in Wake County. Team members include Sian Jose, Josh Ashik and Pranavi Dantuluri.
• The Innovation Award: EATS (Emergency Alert and Texting Service), and app offering resources for victims of human trafficking, developed by students from NC Virtual Public Schools (Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Cabarrus County Schools). Team members include Harshini Bulusu, Sarthak Gupta, Solomon Hall, Wisdom Walker and Jade Moss.

The competition is hosted by the North Carolina Business Committee for Education (NCBCE), a business-led, education non-profit within the Governor’s Office, and sponsored by Lenovo.

“We were thrilled to host the first in-person Ready, Set, App! Pitch Competition at our headquarters in Morrisville, NC in May,” said Libby Richards, community engagement manager at Lenovo. “We were blown away by the quality of the apps and student presentations. I’m excited to see what the future holds for these bright students.”

This year, more students participated in the competition than ever before, with 64 teams from 18 counties registering and 27 fully functioning original apps being created. Students worked in groups of 3-5 along with an advisor and a peer mentor, a fellow high school student with exceptional skills in coding, app design and project management.

Peer mentors were hired as paid interns by Lenovo and met with the teams regularly to provide guidance from debugging code to sharing time management tips. This year’s interns were Siddharth Maruvada, lead intern, North Carolina School of Science and Math; Ganning Xu, North Carolina School of Science and Math; Ahmya Rivera, Northeast Academy for Aerospace and Advanced Technologies; Jonathan Rogers, Northwest Cabarrus High School; and Pranathi Gorty, Wilson Preparatory Academy.

Members of the first place team won top-of-the-line Lenovo Yoga Laptops; second place received brand new Lenovo Tab Pro Tablets; and third place and innovation award winners won Lenovo Smart Clocks.

Ready, Set, App! is open to all North Carolina high school students and will be held again next school year with kickoff planned for fall 2023. For more information about the Ready, Set, App! competition, please visit www.ncbce.org/ready-set-app.

About NCBCE

Since 1983, NCBCE has provided a critical link between North Carolina business leaders and the state’s education decision-makers, helping to create connections between the education curriculum and the overall work readiness of people across the state. Learn more about NCBCE by visiting www.ncbce.org.

About Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$62 billion revenue global technology powerhouse, ranked #171 in the Fortune Global 500, employing 77,000 people around the world, and serving millions of customers every day in 180 markets. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, Lenovo has built on its success as the world’s largest PC company by further expanding into growth areas that fuel the advancement of ‘New IT’ technologies (client, edge, cloud, network, and intelligence) including server, storage, mobile, software, solutions, and services. This transformation together with Lenovo’s world-changing innovation is building a more inclusive, trustworthy, and smarter future for everyone, everywhere. To find out more visit https://www.lenovo.com, and read about the latest news via our StoryHub.