Last month, the Bellwood-Antis STEM program went to Saint Francis University for the Keystone STEM competition, and one group brought home a first place award.

Students who attended included  Noah Gulvas, Ian Clark, Noah Cokrlic , Eli Moser, Alex Fellabaum, Anthony Beradi, and Anthony DeArmitt

The team that took first was Gulvas, Cokrlic, and Clark, who were given the prompt to design something to improve education in k-12. They were then given 3 minutes to present their answer to a panel of judges after a two-hour planning period.

“We had the idea of using AI to reduce stress of academics by designing an AI tutoring app called BrainyPal,” said Gulvas. The app would have students take pictures of their notes, worksheets, problems and so forth. “BrainyPal,” would then spit out personalized tests, quizzes, flashcards or any other studying tool that would help.

“This made it so students would use AI to learn and not just get answers,” Gulvas also said.

The team also had the idea of creating a point and coin system where the more you use the app, the more points you get. The coins would allow you to purchase cosmetics on the shop that can be displayed on your profile and your leaderboard position

The leaderboard itself would also be a motivator, where the more points you have the higher up on the leaderboard you would go.

The app would be able to be downloaded across all platforms and school devices to be used by students.

“The competition was extremely open-ended, and that made it difficult to do because there were so few directions,” said advisor Dr. Alice Flarend. “But after 30 minutes, everyone had locked onto a project idea.”

Clark and Cokrlic have also performed well at the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science competition.