Notable Past WWDC Student Scholarship Winners: Where are they now ?

Apple has been offering Scholarships‘ most talented student developers; The featured apps cover various subjects, including language learning, music, astronomy, math, health & fitness, entertainment, games, and more. Big congrats to all the scholarship winners! Check out the story and all the featured apps.

Apple has recognized all of the WWDC scholarship winners and shared the students’ apps and games, which cover a wide variety of subjects.

Notable Past WWDC Student Scholarship Winners: Where are they now?

Pranav Karthik, 14 (Vancouver)

This Vancouver teen has always been fascinated by coding since he was 6, watching both his parents solve real-world problems through their tech careers. As the youngest Canadian to attend WWDC last year, one of his most memorable moments was receiving a tweet from Tim Cook who applauded his efforts to teach others how to code using Swift, Apple’s programming language.

Following an inspiring WWDC, he released Trackr app on the App Store last fall to help students manage homework, assignments and tests in one place. He is updating Trackr this month to help students remotely learning to manage their schedules. He is creating an iOS app for non-profit Manavata to help their Covid-19 relief efforts in third-world countries in his spare time.

Allyson Aberg, 21 (Toronto)

In her first year as a systems design engineering student at the University of Waterloo, Allyson says she “accidentally” discovered her love of coding, realizing the amazing things it can do to solve problems and engage audiences upon accepting an internship iOS developer for a marketing firm.

She has expanded her skills interning at software companies like Tunnelbear in Toronto and Splunk in San Francisco. Last year, she attended her first WWDC as the sole female student developer from Canada. She took the insights she gained to build her mother a customized scheduling and communications app for her Toronto business, Liberty Dental Hygiene. The app has become an important communication tool before, during, and post-pandemic to inform clients of updates around the dental practice.

Santos Gagbegnon, 20, Ottawa

A first-time WWDC Scholarship recipient in 2019, Santos loved attending to befriend other student developers from all over the world and maintain these relationships to this day, trading information, offering encouragement and sharing common interests. He valued what he learned at the WWDC workshops and applied what he learned through an internship at Shopify’s head office in Ottawa as an iOS intern.

He’s also released his first app on the App Store called ARMusic, where users can take their music playlist and bring album art into their environment using augmented reality.

Sasha Ivanov, 25 (Calgary)

A two-time WWDC attendee and graduate of the University of Calgary, following WWDC19, Sasha started his company, Beat Bop, which focused on building audio sample apps for the music industry. His flagship app Sternify is under development and uses Apple’s CoreML to separate instruments from a music track; a common task music producers often request to study and inspire their next big hit.

Beat Bop’s journey began while a master’s student at Calgary utilized his learnings from school and multiple trips to WWDC to build Sternify and earn a People’s Choice award from his university’s Summer Innovation Showcase.

Adrian Ensan, 22 (Toronto)

A recent computer science graduate from the University of Toronto, Adrian is a software developer at Tunnelbear. A multi WWDC scholarship winner, he used these skills gamed from other developers and

Apple engineers combined with his own work experience to release his first app on the App Store called Backgammon Game, the classic game that connects friends to play directly through iMessage, avoiding having to download and open a separate app. He was motivated to launch it recently during a time where Canadians are spending more time online.

Ayden Panhuyzen, 18 (Toronto)

A two-time WWDC Student Scholar in 2016 and 2019, Ayden learned how to code on his own at age 11. After graduating from Pickering High School last year, he released two apps on the App Store: Stock, a fun, light-hearted communications tool to enlighten iMessage and Dollar an app to track hours worked by the hour, minute and second.

These apps were inspired by his personal experiences sending funny iMessages with friends and wanting a way to track his billable hours. He is currently working full-time at the iOS software company Reincubate.