Los Gatos, February 8, 2023: The Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District (LGSUHSD) is proud to announce that Saratoga High School’s Mechanical Science and Engineering Robotics Team (MSET) hosted a health hackathon for Bay Area high schools on January 27 - 29, 2023. Bringing in teams from as far as Ojai, California, Saratoga High School (SHS) had three teams compete in the challenge, with one SHS team being selected for 1st place by a panel of independent judges.
Sophomores Tanuj Siripurapu and Neel Reddy won the competition by creating Zero Responders, an app that provides a community-driven task force of volunteers to deliver basic medical attention. Tanuj and Neel share that they were inspired after learning that in rural and developing nations, people can often struggle to get medical attention on time. Extremely preventable accidents, such as heart attacks, can be intercepted with something as simple as CPR, and this app would connect volunteers with people in need of medical attention.
Completely student-driven, this was MSET’s first health hackathon. Initiated by sophomore Harjyot Sahni, Harjyot wanted to create a theme that would resonate with students. He chose “Mental & Physical Well-Being” as the challenge to align with Saratoga High School’s Speak Up for Change Week, a school-wide event focusing on Moving Past, emphasizing and affirming the importance of coping with stress and trauma. Speak Up for Change Week took place January 23-27, leading up to the Health Hackathon event.
With judges from various Silicon Valley technology companies, including Google, Meta, Apple, and Expedia Group, teams presented their project through a slideshow that could include a video demonstration or live demo. Judges reviewed projects based on technical complexity, visual appeal, impact, and theme relativity.
As first place winners, Saratoga High School’s Tanuj and Neel received a guaranteed paid internship opportunity this summer through Slingshot, in addition to a lifetime paid subscription to Taskade Premium, a real-time organization and collaboration tool for remote and distributed teams. Over $84,000 in prizes were awarded to winning teams and participants in total. You can view all the winners and entries here.