During her elementary school days, junior Saanika Dutta and her sister would constantly argue about lost belongings that they were unsure they owned. When this problem arose, Saanika felt an eagerness to solve it. This is when she encountered a machine learning model called Teachable Machine. As someone with an immense passion for coding, she was intrigued by what the machine could do, deciding to use it and her problem-solving ability, to form a detector that would identify whether something belonged to them or not. 

Just like that, Saanika had discovered a true passion.

“I like that logical mindset of thinking, while also being creative, and coding was the best of both worlds,” Saanika said.

Projects like these motivated Saanika to further cultivate her programming skills even today, after receiving an award for using her skills to solve much larger issues facing the modern world.

Saanika won the district award for the 2025 Congressional App Challenge, an annual nationwide coding competition established by the U.S. House of Representatives for middle and high school students to create and submit their own apps. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, representing Illinois’ first district, presented the award on Jan. 29.

“I’m just really honored that I get to represent the district which my school is in, while also representing this issue that’s very important to me, and kind of bringing awareness of how AI can be used for good,” Saanika said.

The app Saanika created, Bias Lite, uses AI tools to detect and minimize gender bias in writing, a problem that she noticed women and girls experience frequently. The idea for this app came from videos on TikTok about this issue in medical documentation that instantly caught her attention, especially how it can affect women.

“Something as simple as biased wording in a medical record could decide whether people lived or died. I could not stop thinking about it,” Saanika said, according to the Congressional App Challenge website. “I wanted to do something instantly, starting in my own community.”

Daniel Wheadon, Saanika’s computer science teacher at U-High last year, knows her drive when it comes to investigating critical issues. Saanika attends Mr. Wheadon’s independent study where he has noticed the amazing things she is able to accomplish.

“The kinds of problems she’s trying to tackle are quite large and extensive and complex,” Mr. Wheadon said. “Even with the independent study, she’s doing stuff that I’d have to sit down and think, How would I approach this problem? Where do I go or what tools do I use?”

With a passion that stemmed from when she was very young, Saanika was able to use what she loved to form something that made a difference and inspired her to continue moving forward with ideas of her own.