2023 Congressional App Challenge
Submitted by William Corprew
Newark Academy sophomores Alexis Zhang, a resident of Chatham, and Aadit Shrivastava, a resident of Short Hills, were named winners of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge, in which high school students compete to make the best application in their congressional district.
The presented their app TranquilTally to Congresswoman Hillary J. Scholten, who serves the 3rd district of Michigan. The team competed in the Michigan district because Alexis resided there during the summer, when most of the app development took place.
“TranquilTally offers a simple and stress-free approach to improving mental health and taking mindful steps daily,” says Alexis. “Overall, the website is a valuable tool for anyone looking to enhance their mental wellbeing through self-reflection and positive habit-building.”
The duo was inspired by their personal experiences to create an easy, healthy and effective tool for self-care. “During this process, we had many candid conversations about our shared frustration with stress-inducing methods of self-care that often make it harder to improve mental health,” Aadit says. “We noticed that many existing platforms and approaches were overly complex, demanding, or overwhelming. Our goal was to create a platform that takes the burden out of self-care and, instead, makes it an enjoyable and effective journey toward better mental well-being.”
With the help of NA Computer Science Teacher Andrew Alford, Alexis and Aadit worked together to make TranquilTally a reality. It took a few months to develop the framework for an innovative yet feasible idea, but once their plan was in place, they dove into coding the user interface and database backend with systems such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL.
In April, Alexis and Aadit traveled to Washington, D.C., to demo TranquilTally for members of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol Building during the #HouseofCode, a STEM expo event for the competition winners.
