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SFU Hosts Technovation Challenge to Encourage Girls to Pursue Computer Science!

March 11, 2016

WRITTEN BY: JENNA ANDERSON

The Technovation Challenge is a global technology entrepreneurship competition for girls in middle school and high school. Girls must work in teams to create mobile phone apps that will address a community problem. The challenge was launched in 2009 and has had over 5,000 girls from over 64 countries participate.

At the end of February two teams from the Lower Mainland came together to meet with industry mentors from Appnovation. They worked on developing their mobile phone apps, how to build a company to launch the app and how to pitch their plan to a panel of experts

Team United Utopians is developing an app that will be a real-time database for Syrian refugees new to Canada. It will provide transit schedules, show what Canadian money looks like and locate services and resources such as Arabic speaking doctors.

Team Fresh is developing an app that will help adolescents regulate their moods. Users will be able to select an emotion they are feeling and the app will then suggest ways to make them feel better. The app may suggest listening to a certain type of music, exercising or may even provide a list of mental health resources depending on the escalation of the user’s mood.

The top teams from around the world will travel to an international pitch competition held in San Francisco. One of these teams, selected by Technovation judges, will win $10,000 in seed funding to help them launch their app.

Click Here to learn more about Technovation at Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Applied Sciences.