Maine App Challenge winners from left, Sebastien Martinez, Yarmouth High School, third place; Matthew Fagerlund, Scarborough High School, first place; and Abigail Hews, Scarborough High School, second place. Contributed / Tyler Technologies

Maine App Challenge winners

Two Scarborough High School students and one Yarmouth High School student were selected as the top winners of Yarmouth-based Tyler Technologies’ 2023 Maine App Challenge.

Matthew Fagerlund of Scarborough High School was the first-place winner with GiRAPHER, an app that helps middle and high school students learn how to graph mathematical equations. In second was Abigail Hews, also of Scarborough, for Resume Roulette, an app that produces custom resumes and tracks user information. Sebastien Martinez of Yarmouth High School came in third with his ColoPrep, which enables users to successfully prepare for colonoscopies.

The students were awarded $6,000, $3,000 and $1,000, respectively, in college savings plans, Oculus virtual reality headsets and a guaranteed internship interview following their sophomore year in college.

Cape Elizabeth high schooler Aurora Milton’s upcycled jumper wins ecoMaine’s challenge. Contributed / Aurora Milton

Cape Elizabeth High student wins ecomaine’s Upcycle Challenge

For the second year in a row, Cape Elizabeth High School junior Aurora Milton has won ecomaine’s Upcycle Challenge, which asks students to use items that would have normally been disposed of to make new, functional items.

Milton designed and manufactured a jumper from old clothing and fabric that might otherwise have been thrown out. In her entry statement, Milton noted her generation’s distaste for fast fashion, instead opting for thrifted or upcycled clothing.

Projects from Westbrook’s Intercultural Community Center and Scarborough’s Fiddlehead Center for the Arts were also finalists in the competition. All three projects were voted on in the month of April to celebrate Earth Day, and Milton’s jumper received 71% of the vote, earning $500 for Cape Elizabeth High School.