“Rising up in LA, I’ve all the time been conscious of the wildfire dangers that include dwelling in Southern California,” Marina Lee, a 21-year-old laptop science pupil on the College of Southern California, tells Entrepreneur. “However the urgency really hit residence when my grandmother discovered herself within the evacuation zones in the course of the latest LA wildfires again in January — she known as me as a result of she acquired an evacuation alert on her cellphone.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Apple. Marina Lee.
Lee recollects being overwhelmed by the scenario and not sure of what to pack, the place to go and the right way to keep up to date. Realizing that so many different folks have been most likely experiencing the identical confusion and worry, she determined to construct an app to resolve the issue: EvacuMate.
Lee’s EvacuMate helps customers put together an emergency guidelines of important gadgets, add copies of necessary paperwork through their iPhone digital camera roll and import emergency contacts by way of their iPhone’s contacts record. The app additionally permits customers to watch air high quality ranges and put collectively a first-aid package.
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 authentic app playgrounds constructed with Apple’s Swift coding language.
Most college students start making ready their submissions months prematurely, so the deadline “felt slightly 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 initiatives within the years since.
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As a “very inventive” individual, 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 interact along with her audience 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 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 handle and can showcase the corporate’s new know-how 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 the right way to play the normal Japanese card recreation; Luciana Ortiz Nolasco, 15, of Mexico, whose app BreakDownCosmic presents a digital gathering place for astronomy fans; and Nahom Worku, 21, who grew up in Ethiopia and Canada and developed the app AccessEd, which offers studying assets which can be obtainable 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 way of a digital setting. So attending this convention would actually convey that have in individual.”
Lee is presently interning as a front-end engineer at Amazon in Seattle, Washington. The function focuses on net design and constructing person interfaces, a course of that, like coding, additionally offers her the possibility 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 faculty.
Different younger individuals who need to learn to code and probably pursue an engineering profession ought to think about collaborating in hackathons, 24-48-hour occasions the place college students collaborate on initiatives 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 pals that I nonetheless be in contact with to at the present time,” Lee says. “[The experience] allowed me to be taught extra about coding and develop 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 dwelling in Southern California,” Marina Lee, a 21-year-old laptop science pupil on the College of Southern California, tells Entrepreneur. “However the urgency really hit residence when my grandmother discovered herself within the evacuation zones in the course of the latest LA wildfires again in January — she known as me as a result of she acquired an evacuation alert on her cellphone.”
Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Apple. Marina Lee.
Lee recollects being overwhelmed by the scenario and not sure of what to pack, the place to go and the right way to keep up to date. Realizing that so many different folks have been most likely experiencing the identical confusion and worry, she determined to construct an app to resolve the issue: EvacuMate.
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