On Saturday, a student team from Tesla STEM High School won the statewide Youth Apps Challenge.

Rayan Krishnan, Anne Lee and Suchi Sridhar received first place in the challange for “Carpool School,” their carpooling app, which uses social media to connect students for ride sharing. The trio was selected from among 15 finalists.

The group’s team leader teacher was Melissa Wrenchey.

Another STEM team also competed, their app was “Hope for the Homeless,” which provides an easy and efficient way for homeless people to find cheap, affordable resources and services.

Final selections were made at a live pitch and judging contest supported by Amazon, the Breneman-Jaech Foundation, Comcast, Google and the state’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, hosted by the University of Washington (UW) Computer Science and Engineering (CSE).

“Google is pleased to sponsor the Youth Apps Challenge,” said Eric Young, vice president and head of Google Washington. “It’s great to see students from all over the state building solutions to the challenges they see in their own lives, and so engaged and excited about STEM education.”

The Youth Apps Challenge is a two-part program that introduces both teachers and students to the power and potential of programming. Run through the statewide nonprofit Technology Alliance and now in its third year, Youth Apps motivates teams of middle and high school students from across Washington state to develop innovative computer applications that address everyday problems. Through a combination of teacher training and a youth contest, the challenge directly exposes hundreds of students to basic programming and problem solving skills.

“Youth Apps uniquely engages both experienced and novice student coders while at the same time providing teachers with the training and tools they need to support these budding innovators at all skill levels,” said Carol Rava, CEO of the Technology Alliance.

This year more than 50 teams of students (each with a faculty sponsor) submitted apps to the challenge. Teams submitted either a concept with wireframes or an actual functioning app, and were evaluated against the following criteria: problem solving and innovation, illustration of idea, feasibility, users and market. For the technical entries judges also looked at functionality, usability, technical complexity and code elegance.

“Kids are natural explorers,” said Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates chair in CSE at UW and a speaker at the event. “Programs like Youth Apps provide a great introduction to computer science and computational thinking – fundamental capabilities for 21st century citizens.”

Washington state currently has more than 17,000 unfilled computing jobs and estimates show an annual shortage of 2,131 CS baccalaureate graduates and 1,674 graduate degrees from 2018-23, according to the Washington Student Achievement Council. Seattle alone imports almost 80 percent of its tech-related talent.

Groups like the Technology Alliance are leading efforts to address the gap, starting in middle school.

Judges from Google, the City of Seattle, and Comcast determined first, second and third places from among the 15, looking for the teams that were the most persuasive and passionate, best able to express the purpose of the app and had created a high-quality app.

Members of every finalist team received a gift card and the top three teams also received an Amazon Kindle Fire.