Rishik Boddeti ‘24 has been chosen by Congressman Michael McCaul as Texas’s district 10 Congressional App Challenge winner. The Congressional App Challenge, a U.S. House of Representatives initiative, was created to both promote coding education amongst students and to encourage them to pursue computer science careers. Each participating member of Congress chooses a winning app from their respective district, and the winners are then invited to show their app to Congress.

Personal experience, alongside the disease’s prevalence, led Bodetti to focus his app on dementia. While dementia is only expected to rise in the coming years, many people with dementia are not diagnosed because of their struggles to find the right care. Boddeti’s app, iCog, allows users to screen for dementia symptoms, facilitating an earlier diagnosis.

“I was motivated to create this app after witnessing my grandfather’s struggles with dementia — particularly in receiving an accurate diagnosis,” Boddeti said. “Like my grandfather, the majority of people struggling with dementia have a lack of access to proper medical facilities.”

The challenge came with more competition than ever this year, with a record 2,707 apps being submitted across the nation. Locally, each district had around 20 competing apps, another large difference from previous years.

“[The competition] never made me feel super stressed because I made the app before I knew about the competition,” Boddeti said. “I just decided to register and see what would happen.”

Boddeti hopes to continue to work with more computer science projects in the future, while also building his apps.

“In the future, I want to use my computer science skills in other projects, specifically around the use of artificial intelligence,” Boddeti said.