In April, rising sophomores Catherine Zhao, Ronit Gagneja, Jeffrey Yang and Michelle Kwan took second place at the Cupertino Hackathon, held at the city’s Quinlan Community Center. During the event, they created an app that helps students organize bike rides, carpools and meetups. Their work was presented to the Cupertino City Council, with the top five teams receiving awards from Cupertino mayor Savita Vaidhyanathan.

About 20 teams competed at the Cupertino Hackathon, during which they spent 13 hours creating projects intended to improve public safety and promote community togetherness. The event also offered many learning opportunities, including workshops on women’s contributions to computer science and leveraging software used by several large tech companies.