Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile), the No.1 mobile phone provider in the United States and the No. 1 smartphone provider worldwide1, recognized the top five students and their mobile application concepts developed during the 2012 Mobile Application Boot Camps.
 
Grand prize winner Joseph Romano, a tenth grader at Arlington High School in Arlington, MA, received a $20,000 scholarship for his Better4All volunteer application. Romano’s Better4All mobile application is a crowd-sourced service which allows users within a specific region to report and respond to volunteer opportunities within three main categories: road hazards, off-road issues and volunteer positions. This call-to-action application encourages users to identify areas in their community that need emergency and philanthropic assistance.
 
“The goal for the Samsung Mobile Application Boot Camps is to inspire a new generation of engineers,” said Dale Sohn, President of Samsung Telecommunications America. “The students that participated are learning a timely and relevant skill that has an opportunity to influence not only their lives, but the lives of others as well. It is encouraging to see the creativity these students have and the desire to empower change through technology.”
 
Sophia Li, an eleventh grader, at Lowell High School in San Francisco received second place and a $10,000 scholarship for her SoundUP app. By allowing users to “piggyback” on multiple phone speakers, SoundUP delivers a synchronized, extended speaker system. SoundUP not only brings people together through the power of music, but also delivers on convenience, personalization and versatility.
 
The third place prize of a $5,000 scholarship was awarded to Ofri Harlev, an eleventh grader, at Lowell High School in San Francisco. Harlev created the Karma Trader application to bring communities together by identifying and promoting citizens’ unique skill sets, such as carpentry or health care.
 
Fourth & Fifth place winners, David Park, from Duluth, GA, and James Fong, from Alameda, CA, in addition to all winners, will receive Samsung Galaxy S® III smartphones. For more information or to view winner concept submissions, please visit www.scholastic.com/samsungbootcamp
 
In July and August of 2012, Samsung Mobile collaborated with highly recognized engineering universities, University of California, Berkeley, University of Texas at Dallas, Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to host four two-day mobile application boot camps for top performing high school students interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
 
Samsung worked with Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, to develop the activities for the boot camps, as well as teacher resources that are available online for teachers interested in teaching mobile application development during the school year.