“Rising up in LA, I’ve all the time been conscious of the wildfire dangers that include residing in Southern California,” Marina Lee, a 21-year-old pc science pupil on the College of Southern California, tells Entrepreneur. “However the urgency really hit dwelling when my grandmother discovered herself within the evacuation zones through the current LA wildfires again in January — she known as me as a result of she received an evacuation alert on her cellphone.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Apple. Marina Lee.
Lee recollects being overwhelmed by the state of affairs and not sure of what to pack, the place to go and tips on how to keep up to date. Realizing that so many different individuals have been most likely experiencing the identical confusion and worry, she determined to construct an app to remedy the issue: EvacuMate.
Lee’s EvacuMate helps customers put together an emergency guidelines of important gadgets, add copies of necessary paperwork by way of their iPhone digicam roll and import emergency contacts by their iPhone’s contacts checklist. The app additionally permits customers to observe air high quality ranges and put collectively a first-aid equipment.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Marina Lee
It took Lee about one month to develop the app and submit it to Apple’s Swift Pupil Problem, a contest that invitations college students throughout the globe to enter their unique app playgrounds constructed with Apple’s Swift coding language.
Most college students start getting ready their submissions months upfront, so the deadline “felt slightly tight,” Lee notes. Nonetheless, she was able to rise to the event, having began her coding journey in center college and accomplished a number of tasks within the years since.
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As a “very inventive” particular person, Lee first targeted on the app’s design and structure, she says. Then she turned her consideration to the sensible options. Lee requested family and friends for suggestions as she labored on EvacuMate, and the “very collaborative course of” allowed her to have interaction along with her target market and perceive how they’d work together with the app.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Marina Lee
“I undoubtedly sit up for assembly different Swift Pupil Problem winners [at WWDC].”
Out of this yr’s 350 profitable submissions, Lee was chosen as one of many 50 distinguished winners invited to attend the Worldwide Builders Convention (WWDC) at Apple Park. The 2025 convention, which takes place in-person and on-line from June 9-13, kicks off with CEO Tim Cook dinner‘s keynote handle and can showcase the corporate’s new know-how and software program.
A few of this yr’s different distinguished winners embrace Taiki Hamomoto, 22, of Japan, whose app Hanufada Techniques teaches customers tips on how to play the normal Japanese card recreation; Luciana Ortiz Nolasco, 15, of Mexico, whose app BreakDownCosmic affords a digital gathering place for astronomy fanatics; and Nahom Worku, 21, who grew up in Ethiopia and Canada and developed the app AccessEd, which supplies studying assets which are out there with or with out Wi-Fi connectivity.
“I undoubtedly sit up for assembly different Swift Pupil Problem winners [at WWDC] and different builders normally from the world over,” Lee says. “All through my years of involvement within the hackathon group, I have been capable of construct lasting friendships and connections with college students from all the world over, but it surely was solely by a digital setting. So attending this convention would actually deliver that have in particular person.”
Lee is at the moment interning as a front-end engineer at Amazon in Seattle, Washington. The function focuses on net design and constructing consumer interfaces, a course of that, like coding, additionally offers her the prospect to get inventive, she says. She hopes to pursue comparable work that enables her to merge her ardour for creativity, artwork and coding after she graduates from faculty.
Different younger individuals who need to discover ways to code and probably pursue an engineering profession ought to contemplate collaborating in hackathons, 24-48-hour occasions the place college students collaborate on tasks and attend workshops, Lee says. Lee recollects being intimidated at first, however the expertise laid the inspiration for the place she is now.
“I met some new mates that I nonetheless communicate with to this present day,” Lee says. “[The experience] allowed me to study extra about coding and change into extra concerned within the hackathon group. I began organizing some [hackathons] myself and mentoring at different hackathons. It is a good first step in coding and actually means that you can [join] the group.”
“Rising up in LA, I’ve all the time been conscious of the wildfire dangers that include residing in Southern California,” Marina Lee, a 21-year-old pc science pupil on the College of Southern California, tells Entrepreneur. “However the urgency really hit dwelling when my grandmother discovered herself within the evacuation zones through the current LA wildfires again in January — she known as me as a result of she received an evacuation alert on her cellphone.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Apple. Marina Lee.
Lee recollects being overwhelmed by the state of affairs and not sure of what to pack, the place to go and tips on how to keep up to date. Realizing that so many different individuals have been most likely experiencing the identical confusion and worry, she determined to construct an app to remedy the issue: EvacuMate.
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