Winners of third annual OSU mobile app competition named

Thursday, April 2, 2015

CSAA Insurance Group’s Cody Link (left) and AAA Oklahoma CEO Neal Kruger (right) presented a winning certificate to students Chris Portokalis and teammate Aaron Weaver for their first place in the Drive To Win category of the 2014-2015 OSU App Center mobile app competition. Not pictured is team member Alexander Melton. The student app development competition is sponsored by AAA and its parent company, CSAA.

Finalists in the 2014-2015 Oklahoma State University student mobile app developer’s competition demonstrated their projects to judges March 27 who presented winners in two categories with $12,000 in prize money.

Winners of the third annual OSU App Center competition, sponsored by AAA Oklahoma, developed projects in two categories: “Drive To Win” apps that challenge participants to drive safer, and “Fitness Telematics,” which are apps that track fitness data. The team of Aaron Weaver, Alexander Melton and Chris Portokalis won the Drive To Win category and $4,000 for their prototype application to monitor a driver’s habits as part of a challenge to improve road safety and earn reduced insurance rates.

In a presentation by CSAA Insurance Group’s Cody Link (left) and AAA Oklahoma CEO Neal Kruger (right) OSU student Marcus Gabileri accepted his certificate for winning the Fitness Telematics category of the 2014-2015 OSU App Center mobile app competition. The student app development competition is sponsored by AAA and its parent company, CSAA.

OSU sophomore computer science student Marcus Gabilheri won first place and $4,000 for his Fitness Telematics app FitHub that tracks data collected from multiple fitness devices like FitBit and Apple devices. This is the second app development win for Gabilheri, who won a category of the 2013-2014 app competition partnering with Jeremy Avery.

Runner-up winners included Ashwin Kumar Thandapani Kumarasamy and Anand Chadrasekaran in the Drive To Win category and Matt Litchfield and Tyler Weppler in the Fitness Telematics category. Each runner-up team received $2,000.

The competition was judged by OSU faculty, members of the OSU App Center Steering Committee and a staff member from local IT company InterWorks. This year’s contest theme was Insurance Telematics and is designed to develop concepts insurance companies could use to market or deliver products and services to customers who prefer using smart devices.

“It is very satisfying to see the apps these bright students have developed through the app competition,” said Neal Kruger, president and CEO of AAA Oklahoma, which has sponsored the competition and the OSU App Center since its launch in 2012. Kruger said AAA Oklahoma and its parent company, CSAA Insurance Group, supports the competition to provide OSU students with resources and tools to develop their mobile application development talent, which is helping the company stay current with technology trends.

“Using the latest technology and staying current on the latest digital capabilities is an important part of how we deliver services to our members,” Kruger said.

“I would like to thank all the participants for putting their time and effort in developing apps for this competition,” said App Center manager Jai Rajendran.

For information about the annual mobile app competition visit https://appcenter.okstate.edu/ or talk to App Center interns in the lobby of the Henry Bellmon Research Center on the OSU campus in Stillwater.