Apple announces WWDC 2023 Swift Student Challenge winners

This year’s Swift Student Challenge winners include (from left to right) Marta Michelle Caliendo, Yemi Agesin, and Asmi Jain.

To help show the extent to which young developer talent is changing things, Apple has shared three stories selected from among the 375 Swift Student Challenge winners.

The Swift Student Challenge

In the run up to Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple challenges students every year to create an original app using Swift. This year, Apple increased the number of winners from the 350 awarded in previous years to 375 so even more students could be included in the event and recognized for their artistry and ingenuity.

Winners will attend virtually and in person to see the keynote, events, labs, and other activities available this year to the global Apple developer community.

What Apple said

“We are amazed by the talent we see from the young developers who enter our Swift Student Challenge,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations.

 “This year’s submissions demonstrated not only the next generation’s commitment to building tools that will improve our lives, but also a willingness to embrace new technologies and tools and deploy them in original and creative ways.”

Click the year to read about winners in 2022 and 2020.

Three of this year’s winners

The three winning students selected for a little Apple promotion are Asmi Jain, Yemi Agesin, and Marta Michelle Caliendo. They have all created interesting apps.

• While at Medi-Caps University in Indore, India, 20-year-old Asmi Jain found out her friend’s uncle had to undergo brain surgery. As a result, he was left with eye misalignment and facial paralysis. Jain designed a playground to track a user’s eye movements as they try to follow a ball moving around the screen. The playground’s purpose is to help strengthen the eye muscles, and though it was inspired by her friend’s uncle, Jain hopes it can be used by people with a variety of eye conditions and injuries.
• 21-year-old Nigerian Yemi Agesin lived in Germany, Nigeria, Belgium, and England before returning to the United States when he was a teenager.  His winning app playground is a first-person baseball game that alludes to two of his passions: sports and filmmaking. “For my next two projects, I’m designing a sports game where you compete against other players in real time in a team setting. And I’m also planning an app that will use augmented reality to help filmmakers visualize their graphics and effects while they’re shooting on iPhone.”
• For 25-year-old Marta Michelle Caliendo is passionate about palaeontology. A student at Apple Developer Academy in Naples, her winning app playground is a memory game featuring anatomically correct pictures of dinosaur fossils. She wants to build apps that help protect animals and the natural environment, including one to help monitor and protect sea turtle nests along Italy’s coast.

In related news, Apple has also made an interactive AR Apple WWDC pester available. To see it, just visit the Apple events page on your iPad or iPhone and tap the morphing Apple logo.

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