Many congratulations are due to Wenni Gu, a third-year student at Reading in International Relations and Economics. Wenni recently attended an award ceremony at 10 Downing Street after designing an innovative mobile phone app. The app, called A&Express, aims to give patients with non-life threatening injuries advice on the best Accident & Emergency hospital to attend to receive treatment fast. It has won an ‘Appathon’ prize for students run by Silicon Valley Comes to the UK (SVC2UK), a not-for-profit group that aims to encourage British technical entrepreneurship.
Wenni Gu (right) and her team mates meet David Cameron at 10 Downing Street. © Crown copyright
Wenni and her two team mates (one from Reading, the other from UCL) met the Prime Minister, David Cameron, in Downing Street last week in order to pick up their prize. They also appeared in a live interview yesterday on BBC Radio Berkshire.
Wenni’s success shows the extent to which a degree programme in IR and Economics can provide valuable transferable skills that can be applied in a very different setting. As Wenni remarked,
From my course, I leant to speak about my thoughts and ideas, with experiences and evidence. In my politics discussion groups, we need to prove our point and bring it to everyone to discuss rather than just keep it to ourselves. So when my team had the idea about this app, I knew how to bring my idea into the discussion and develop it.
You can find more details of the app on the University’s website: http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/newsandevents/releases/PR418256.aspx.
