NC high school students compete in app building contest at Lenovo headquarters

Brea Hollingsworth
·2 min read

MORRISVILLE, N.C. (WNCN) — High school students from across the state showed off their design skills Friday as they participated in an app building contest at Lenovo’s headquarters.

Olivia Mosca, Syd Giridharan and Maddy Chandler have been working on their app, ServeIT, for months.

The app allows teen drivers to deliver donations to charities.

“We use an AI constraint optimization solver to generate the most efficient routes for teens to go to donors’ houses, pick up donations, saving donors time and money and then deliver them to charitable organizations,” said Giridharan.

They were just one of the groups that presented their app idea in front of judges at Lenovo’s headquarters.

The company partnered with the  North Carolina Business Committee for Education for the “Ready, Set, App!” competition.

  • App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)
    App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)
  • App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)
    App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)
  • App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)
    App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)
  • App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)
    App building contest at Lenovo headquarters (Credit: NP Strategy)

“This is a competition for high school students across North Carolina to build an original mobile app to solve a problem in their school or community,” said Ciera Tucker with the NC Business Committee for Education.

Ideas range from food insecurity to medical protocols.

Pranathi Gorty is a Lenovo Intern. This year she has two teams she’s mentoring.

“One of them is called Skin Sense which is basically like a cancer detection melanoma app in a way. It’s really innovative. They use machine learning and all that kind of stuff,” said Gorty. “The other team is Bus Buddies which is basically about buses and routing and trying to help students so they don’t miss the bus and they get to school on time.

Students aren’t just learning how to build an app, but they’re also learning professional development and problem solving.

“Using ServeIt we can kind of crack down on those smaller issues in helping families in need with more specific needs,” said Olivia Mosca.

The fifth year that Lenovo has done the competition.

The top three teams will win both cash and technology prizes.

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