WWDC 2021: Apple Swift Student Challenge winners announced

With less than a week left before the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2021 (June 7-11), Apple announced the winners of the Swift Student Challenge winners.
Apple has picked 350 students from 35 different countries and regions.

Among them, the Cupertino-based company has highlighted three girl students, who excel in demonstrating extraordinary coding and problem-solving skills by submitting an original Swift playground to earn the top spot.

“Every year, we are inspired by the talent and ingenuity that we see from our Swift Student Challenge applicants. This year, we are incredibly proud that more young women applied and won than ever before, and we are committed to doing everything we can to nurture this progress and reach true gender parity,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing.

During the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020, Oakland-based student Gianna Yan felt helpless to support her immunocompromised grandparents to get the essential supplies like groceries in Hawaii.

Despaired over the predicament of her grandparents, Yan created a novel application Feed Fleet. It offered a platform for volunteers to help at-risk individuals to deliver essential goods right to their doorstep.

Feed Fleet app. Credit: Apple

That's not all, Yan collaborated with The Farmlink Project, a student-created nonprofit that helps farms connect their surplus produce to food banks. In just over a year, the project has redirected over 30 million pounds of food.

Now, Yan is working on a new app that helps young adults report sexual assault at schools and also another for women to do a self-examination to look for signs of breast cancer and heart-related diseases at an early stage.

Apple also highlights another bright girl student Abinaya Dinesh, 15. Last year, during a routine check-up by a gastroenterologist, she was diagnosed with pelvic floor disorder.

However, Abinaya did not get much help in terms of prognosis on how to deal with body muscle dysfunction.

So, North Brunswick-based girl genius has developed her own app aptly named Gastro at Home, which offers access to information and resources about gastrointestinal disorders, especially because those types of conditions can sometimes be sensitive to talk about.

The Gastro at Home app is expected to make the debut on Apple App Store soon.

Damilola Awofisayo, 17, of Woodbridge, Virginia also made it to the top of the list. She loves hackathons and in 2020, applied for participating in several events, but couldn't get in.

Unfettered Damilola started her own TecHacks, a nonprofit initiative that promises to create a supportive environment for girls to create, problem-solve, and showcase their talents alongside like-minded females to compete and work with.

She hosted a virtual event in August 2020. It attracted more than 800 women and nonbinary individuals from over 60 countries.

"When you increase the number of girls in tech, you also see a shift in the problems that are being addressed and the solutions. And I’m excited to be a part of that," said Damilola Awofisayo.

Besides the TecHacks, Awofisayo helps the organisation run coding workshops and an annual fellowship. She’s also working on an American Sign Language app that she hopes will launch on the App Store later this year.

Along with the top three winners, the rest of the 347 students will also get virtual access to this year's WWDC edition and get to interact with experts to improve their skill sets.

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