Winner of the National STEM Festival – Liam C

We really like to share that one of our students, Liam Chattergy, a junior from Hawaii, was named the 2025 National STEM champion and also received the prestigious Congress innovation award by the National Stem Festival!

Only four students from Hawaii were selected as Stem finalists, and only two – including Liam – named Stem Champions. As part of this honor, Liam was invited to Washington, DC to present his project and take part in the National Stem Festival with all costs paid. The project, Natura Defender, is also among the selected people recognized by the Congress innovation award, the most special honor presented by the National Stem Festival.

Liam began his coding journey in grade 5 and has studied with Create & Learn since 2021. Over the past four years, he completed various courses, including introduction to Python, cellular application development, cloud computing, AI creators, and more. We are very happy to see its growth for many years and finally won this award. Extraordinary Milestone!

We ask Liam to share a little about his experience and inspiration behind his project. We hope that the trip will inspire many other people to use their computer science skills to help their community.

This is a short article from Liam.

I participated in the challenges of the 2022 and 2024 Congress applications and adapted my project to the submission of my national STEM Festival. My application is called Natura defender. This is a video game created to provide incentives and test whether human behavior can be modified for more sustainable interactions with the environment. It focuses on the situation in Hawaii, such as swimming turtles or monks who are stranded.

Applications for the National Stem Festival are relatively straightfoward. Although my game was not required to be submitted, I had to write an explanation and explain the purpose of my work in round 1 and the video explanation in round 2. As champions of the 2025 National Stem Festival selected, I received flights and hotels that were paid all at Washington, DC. I attended the mentor and panel discussion session and presented my work at the National Stem Festival. I met so many extraordinary friends with unique and extraordinary projects. One of my friends created technology to help robots detect pressure on human skin to help robots take care of our parents. The National Stem Festival introduced me to the world of completely new innovation and people with the same interest for me.

Congratulations again, Liam! We are very proud of your achievements and desires for the community.

For all our students. The challenge of the 2025 Congress application is now open! Get ready for that early and see how we can help you prepare for the challenges of the congress application. We will announce more details about our Code for Nature Challenge this year too, so be sure to register our bulletin and keep following the development of updates.