McClellan Announces Winners of the 2024-2025 Congressional App Challenge

Washington, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan (VA-04) announced the winners of the 2024-2025 Congressional App Challenge for Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District: Saket Sambaraju and Abhinav Gitta. Saket and Abhinav designed MelanomAI, an application that scans images for melanoma skin cancer with a 92.28% testing accuracy.

MelanomAI allows users to use their device to take a photograph of a part of their skin, wherever there is a lesion or mole, and have it scanned for melanoma skin cancer with a prediction of benign or malignant. The app utilizes a deep learning model trained on over 10,000 images to make accurate predictions, provides information about treating skin cancer early, and uses the Google Maps API to confirm the user’s location and provide a map of nearby hospitals to get a medical examination if the model suspects that melanoma is present.

“Saket and Abhinav have designed an incredibly useful tool that provides a free, fast, and accurate way to assess a person’s risk of skin cancer,” said Congresswoman McClellan. “Melanoma skin cancer has a 99% survival rate if identified early, but that number drops drastically the longer it progresses without detection. MelanomAI seeks to quite literally save lives by catching melanoma in the first stage and saving people the time and money they would have to spend to visit a hospital and determine if a minimal rash or mole is potentially dangerous to their health. I commend Saket and Abhinav for coding such an ambitious project, and for setting out to help people and solve a very treatable problem. Congratulations again to Saket and Abhinav on winning the Congressional App Challenge for Virginia’s Fourth!”

McClellan called Saket and Abhinav to personally congratulate them on winning this year’s competition. They are both eleventh graders. Saket attends Maggie Walker Governor’s School and Abhinav attends Deep Run High School.

The Congressional App Challenge is a nationwide competition that fosters students’ interest and passion in STEM and computer science. Saket and Abhinav, as representatives of Virginia’s Fourth in the Congressional App Challenge, will be invited to Washington, D.C. to meet Congresswoman McClellan and attend the annual #HouseofCode science fair.

Watch Saket and Abhinav’s application demonstration video here.