“Rising up in LA, I’ve at all times been conscious of the wildfire dangers that include dwelling 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 house when my grandmother discovered herself within the evacuation zones throughout the current LA wildfires again in January — she referred to as me as a result of she bought an evacuation alert on her cellphone.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Apple. Marina Lee.
Lee recollects being overwhelmed by the state of affairs and uncertain of what to pack, the place to go and find out how to keep up to date. Realizing that so many different folks have been in all probability experiencing the identical confusion and concern, she determined to construct an app to resolve the issue: EvacuMate.
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Lee’s EvacuMate helps customers put together an emergency guidelines of important gadgets, add copies of essential paperwork through their iPhone digital camera roll and import emergency contacts by means of their iPhone’s contacts record. The app additionally permits customers to watch 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 Scholar Problema 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 prematurely, so the deadline “felt somewhat tight,” Lee notes. Nevertheless, 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 format, 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 together with her audience and perceive how they’d work together with the app.
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Marina Lee
“I undoubtedly stay up for assembly different Swift Scholar Problem winners (at WWDC).”
Out of this 12 months’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 Prepare dinner’s keynote tackle and can showcase the corporate’s new expertise and software program.
A few of this 12 months’s different distinguished winners embody Taiki Hamomoto, 22, of Japan, whose app Hanufada Techniques teaches customers find out how to play the normal Japanese card recreation; Luciana Ortiz Nolasco, 15, of Mexico, whose app BreakDownCosmic presents a digital gathering place for astronomy fanatics; and Nahom Worku, 21, who grew up in Ethiopia and Canada and developed the app AccessEd, which offers studying sources which are out there with or with out Wi-Fi connectivity.
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“I undoubtedly stay up for assembly different Swift Scholar Problem winners (at WWDC) and different builders typically from internationally,” Lee says. “All through my years of involvement within the hackathon neighborhood, I have been capable of construct lasting friendships and connections with college students from all internationally, however it was solely by means of a digital setting. So attending this convention would actually convey that have in particular person.”
Lee is at present interning as a front-end engineer at Amazon in Seattle, Washington. The position focuses on internet 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 related work that enables her to merge her ardour for creativity, artwork and coding after she graduates from school.
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Different younger individuals who need to learn to code and probably pursue an engineering profession ought to take into account 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 muse for the place she is now.
“I met some new mates that I nonetheless be in contact with to today,” Lee says. “(The expertise) allowed me to be taught extra about coding and change into extra concerned within the hackathon neighborhood. 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 (be part of) the neighborhood.”
“Rising up in LA, I’ve at all times been conscious of the wildfire dangers that include dwelling 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 house when my grandmother discovered herself within the evacuation zones throughout the current LA wildfires again in January — she referred to as me as a result of she bought an evacuation alert on her cellphone.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Apple. Marina Lee.
Lee recollects being overwhelmed by the state of affairs and uncertain of what to pack, the place to go and find out how to keep up to date. Realizing that so many different folks have been in all probability experiencing the identical confusion and concern, she determined to construct an app to resolve the issue: EvacuMate.
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