Students design and demo mobile apps to benefit society at UC Davis

Students design and demo mobile apps to benefit society at UC Davis

We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the second-annual CITRIS Mobile App Challenge at UC Davis: SafeTravel, Eventr, PalMe, & Food Budgt.

CITRIS sponsors this two-quarter competition for Davis undergraduate and graduate students to develop mobile apps for social impact while fostering innovation, community service, and career development. At the start of the Spring 2016 quarter, 10 teams and 35 students joined the Challenge to learn about, build, and iterate on mobile app designs in the following categories:

  • Connected Communities & Civic Tech
  • Health & Wellness
  • People & Robots
  • Sustainability & the Environment

On Friday, May 6th, 6 teams pitched their apps during a public Demo Day event to a panel of judges from industrial and community organizations. The event culminated in a celebration of the students’ learning process and presentation of awards to the following teams:

  • 1st place award of $2,500: SafeTravel
  • 2nd place award of $2,000: Eventr
  • 3rd place award of $1,500: PalMe
  • 4th place award of $1,000: Food Budgt
  • Most Innovative award of $500: PalMe

Congratulations to all of the 2016 Mobile App Challenge participants! We’d also like to thank each of our judges for their time and feedback for the students:

  • Amber Harris, Program Coordinator, Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  • Brett Snyder, Assistant Professor of Design, Department of Design, UC Davis
  • Justin Woodjack, Co-Founder and CTO, Foodfully
  • Kyle Calica, UC Davis Student, Programmer, CITRIS Student Intern
  • Peter Forde, Senior Analyst, Innovation Alliances, University of California Office of the President (UCOP)
  • Tara Parker-Essig, UC Davis Student, UX Designer

Meet the Winners

First Place:
SafeTravel
(Connected Communities & Civic Tech category)

SafeTravel won the $2500 First Place Prize for their app that supports solo female travelers with access to trustworthy travel companions, a platform to exchange ‘street smarts’ among the community, and quick access to local emergency information.

SafeTravel Team: Connie Xu, Michelle Lee, Emily Alameida

Second Place:
Eventr
(Connected Communities category)

Eventr won the $2000 Second Place Prize with a platform that connects busy college students with career opportunities by promoting simplicity and ease-of-use with simple scheduling solutions.

Eventr Team: Disha Bendre, Brandon Luong, Lindsay Chan, Vincent Yang, Sahana Mundewadi

Third Place & Most Innovative Award:
PalMe (Health & Wellness category)

PalMe won the $1500 Third Place Prize and $500 Most Innovative Prize with an app that uses sensor-based technology and real-time data to provide virtual companion support for people with Alzheimer’s.

PalMe Team: Waghmini Lingannagari, Sahana Melkris, Bimala Bogati, Sonia Gupta


 Fourth Place:
Food Budgt
(Health & Wellness category)

Food Budgt won the $1000 Fourth Place Prize for their app that streamlines the supply chain from the wholesaler to food banks to food insecure households.

FoodBudgt Team: Suraj Jena, Kumud Ravisankaran, Pranav Gupta, Ninad Mehta, Veronica Scott

Photo Gallery:

Meet the 2016 Teams

Eventr

Disha Bendre, Brandon Luong, Lindsay Chan, Vincent Yang, Sahana Mundewadi

Eventr connects busy college students with the career opportunities available by promoting simplicity and ease-of-use with simple scheduling solutions. Users can minimize their time spent searching for internships, company info sessions, and other corporate events by using our application, which compiles all career related data into a simple, streamlined feed. The feed can be viewed in the app’s calendar or integrated with Google and Apple Calendars. This app pulls data from the user’s university list servs, making it essential to all students looking for future careers via university recruitment.

Food Budgt

Suraj Jena, Kumud Ravisankaran, Pranav Gupta, Ninad Mehta, Veronica Scott

Food Budgt works itself into the every link in the supply chain, all the way from the wholesaler to the food insecure households. It calculates demand from individualized balanced diets for each user, and finds out supply from local wholesaler stock data, and eventually uses merge-and-divide to route food in the right direction for maximal utilization of the resources while maintaining a health standard.

HitUp

Abdulrahman Sahmoud, Arthur Shir

Hitup is a tool targeted at college students for coordinating friends who want to hang out with each other. Beginning from a person who wants to be social, Hitup takes care of coordinating everything in between with the key features of a Defined Decision Maker, an RSVP system, Organized Messaging, and Listed Event Details.

PalMe

Waghmini Lingannagari, Sahana Melkris, Bimala Bogati, Sonia Gupta

Palme is an innovative sensor based technology that uses real-time data and serves as a virtual companion that takes care of patients without the aid of a caretaker. The App helps patients complete their tasks without forgetting important things. Since patients can forget or lose their phone, Palme features a GPS tracker and a voice interactive chip that is embedded in the back of a necklace or watch so the patient can continue to preset reminders and tasks without the phone in their hand. Overall, Palme ensures that patients can prolong their feelings of independence and self sufficiency and that caregivers and loved ones can feel more at ease with the security of patients well being. There is a limited amount of technology to geared towards alleviating the holistic pain of this disease, so we hope with the help of technology, our app will be a great contribution to benefitting society.

RendevenT

Jiarui Wang, Yang Du, Yangguang Liao

Remember the last time that you had an impulse to play basketball, but it turned into a painful process of contacting every one of your friends only to find out most of them already have plans? We can help you change it! RendevenT helps you instantly connect to others nearby who would also love to participate in the same offline activities. So the basketball plan won’t be a problem any more!

SafeTravel

Connie Xu, Michelle Lee, Emily Alameida

Solo traveling is increasing and 72% of these travelers are women. With increased solo traveling, safety concerns grow. SafeTravel is a social network application for female solo travelers that provides access to trustworthy travel companions, a platform to exchange ‘street smarts’ among the community, and quick access to local emergency information. SafeTravel fosters a community of like-minded individuals so people can get the support when they need it, but maintain their independence when they want it.

For more information about the CITRIS Mobile App Challenge challenge at UC Davis, visit http://davis.mobileappchallenge.org/

Meet the winners of the 2016 UC Berkeley CITRIS Mobile App Challenge.

Photo credit: Adriel Olmos