{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://case.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4804", "Case Announces 2025 Winners Of His Congressional App Challenge", "2025-12-22", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "House", "HI", "Ed Case", "C001055", "case.house.gov", "case", "https://case.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx?DocumentTypeID=27&Page=2", "scraper", "(Honolulu, HI) \u2013 U.S. Congressman Ed Case (HI-01) today announced the winners of his 2025 Congressional App Challenge for Hawai\u2018i\u2019s First Congressional District at a reception at the Entrepreneurs Sandbox in Kaka\u2018ako.\n\nThe App Challenge is an official national initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, in which Members of Congress host annuals contests in their districts for middle and high school students. For 2025, 394 of the 441 Members of the House, or 89%, hosted such contests. More information is here: https://www.congressionalappchallenge.us/.\n\n\u201cMy Challenge is a great opportunity for our local students to focus their skills and creativity on developing, testing and analyzing new applications for real-world use,\u201d said Case. \u201cCongratulating the contestants and their \u2018ohana at the Sandbox, \u2018Hawai\u2018i\u2019s community hub to inspire creativity, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship\u2019, adds an extra boost to what will hopefully be an inspiring and motivating experience for all of them.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd results of this year\u2019s Challenge prove once again that Hawai\u2018i\u2019s youth have the skill set, imagination and resolve to compete against the best of our young people nationwide in science, technology, engineering and math, along with the potential to lead the next generations of computer science and technology.\u201d\n\nParticipation in Congressman Case\u2019s First District Congressional App Challenge has grown significantly from 2019, when he conducted his first Challenge after returning to Congress, to 2025. His 2019 Challenge saw ten app submissions from 27 students across four schools. This year, his challenge saw 16 app submissions from 30 students across 8 schools, including three public schools and five private schools.\n\nThe winners of Congressman Case\u2019s First Congressional District 2025 Challenge are:\n\n\u00b7 1st Place \u2013 Aren Sawa of Mid-Pacific Institute\n\nGrade: 11\n\nInstructor: n/a\n\nApp: Hawai\u2018iAlert.jp\n\nVideo: https://youtu.be/ifxGTRVAL0c\n\nSummary, according to the creator:\n\n\u201cHawai\u2018iAlert.jp is a bilingual disaster alert web app that automatically collects official emergency alerts from the U.S. National Weather Service and delivers accurate Japanese translations to users in real time.\n\n\u201cIt focuses on major hazards affecting Hawai\u2018i, such as tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, high surf, strong winds, and wildfires. The app ensures that Japanese-speaking residents, students, and tourists receive the same verified information that English speakers do\u2014instantly and without confusion.\n\n\u201cBuilt with Laravel (PHP), MySQL, and AWS Lightsail, the app automatically retrieves alerts through the NWS API, translates and summarizes them using GPT, and sends updates via the LINE Messaging API. Each message clearly shows its source and timestamp to maintain transparency and reliability.\n\n\u201cHawaiiAlert.jp bridges the language gap in public safety communication, helping everyone in Hawai\u2018i stay informed through trusted, official data\u2014without interpretation or delay.\u201d\n\n2nd Place \u2013 Taeseong Shin ( Iolani School), Lulu Wang (Punahou School), Sol Choi (Bishop Gorman High School\n\nGrade: 12\n\nInstructor: n/a\n\nApp: GQX (Green Quest Exchange)\n\nVideo: https://youtu.be/PMIBJPXX/nk\n\nSummary, according to the creator:\n\n\u201cGreenQuest Exchange (GQX) is a student-built platform turning climate concern into daily, trackable action. GQX has three main aspects.\n\n\u201cAction Tracking: students can log everyday behaviors (walking/biking, reusables, plant-forward meals, home energy steps), where each action converts to estimated CO\u2082e savings using assumptions housed in the app\n\nGamified Mechanics: school/user leaderboards, tree growth, streaks,and badges make progress visible and fun, making it an app fit for young students\n\n\u201cSustainable Marketplace: each school gets a moderated exchange where students post, borrow, or trade items like calculators, lab coats, art supplies, uniforms, and textbooks, or anything you can think of. That local loop reduces purchases, keeps materials in circulation, and meets real student needs.\n\n\u201cPrivacy and safety are non-negotiable. GQX is hosted on Microsoft Azure with integrations through Google Firebase and MongoDB Atlas. We minimize data collection, default to private profiles, and use school-domain access where possible. We provide institution-level insights so schools can see aggregate participation and CO\u2082e estimates, while individual data is never shared without proper consent, in compliance with applicable regulations.\n\n\u201cGQX is built for equity and adoption. The interface is lightweight for low-bandwidth use, mobile-first, and accessible. Moderation tools and community guidelines create safe exchanges.\u201d\n\n3rd Place \u2013 Owen Roe of Punahou School\n\nGrade: 10\n\nInstructor: n/a\n\nApp: The Mock Trial Online Trainer\n\nVideo: https://youtu.be/L_Y8dgDElj4\n\nSummary, according to the creator:\n\n\u201cMy app was designed to help students in mock trial. Mock trial is an annual state competition that mimics real court cases. Students must work as a team to prosecute or defend a random case. This requires different people to specialize in various roles. These include questioning witnesses, playing witnesses, or making long speeches. The Mock Trial Online Trainer mirrors the mock trial system as much as possible.\n\n\u201cTo begin, in mock trial, there are three witnesses on each side, which is reflected in the MTOT. Each witness has a name, a title, and a short statement, which allows the user to have a starting point for their questions.\n\n\u201cThe witnesses are split into two differently colored boxes, green for the prosecution and purple for the defense. Below the witnesses is the evidence, marked by a yellow box, including a name and a short description for each piece. Next, I made all of the different roles that students play during a trial. This includes the opening and closing statement lawyers, who give long speeches; the cross and direct lawyers, who question the witnesses; and the witnesses.\n\n\u201cThe statement lawyers are fairly simple; you give a speech to summarize the evidence, then the \u2018adversary\u2019 side gives their speech. In order to have the \u2018adversary\u2019 side give speeches, I used Groq\u2019s Llama 4 Scout API to generate random text output. This AI model is effective because it has a large limit on the number of tokens it can send each day. The cross and direct lawyer roles work similarly to the statement lawyers, just in an extended format. While the statement lawyers only require one response, the cross and direct roles act as a conversation, so you must repeatedly question the witness, building upon previous statements.\n\n\u201cFinally, as a witness, you are being cross-examined by the \u2018adversary\u2019 lawyer, and you must try to avoid their attacks and reaffirm your own case.\n\nAfter you have finished your case, you get judged. There is a \u2018judge me\u2019 button, available once the case is closed, which gives you a score out of 10 along with feedback on how you can improve. All of your cases are saved for later, so you are able to review your scores and see how you have improved over time. However, if you practice a lot, you can clear past cases with the clear all button.\u201d\n\nThe judges of Case\u2019s 2025 Challenge were: Trung Lam, Executive Director of Hawai\u2018i Technology Development Corporation, a state agency that is expanding Hawai\u2019i\u2019s tech industry; Ellen Ng, founder of Inoa, a blockchain technology consulting firm focused on real-world asset tokenization; and Stefan Holzer, a serial entrepreneur and AI researcher who previously co-founded Fyusion, a computer-vision company in the automotive industry.\n\nAttachments: pictures of Rep. Case at the Entrepreneurs Sandbox, and a group shot of judges and students who participated in this year\u2019s App Challenge with Rep. Case.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://case.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4804"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.821141991764307, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}