By Mary O’KEEFE

Adam Komjathy is a senior at Crescenta Valley High School and a member of the Falkons 589 robot team. He also takes classes in computer science. A year ago when he was in Dr. Greg Neat’s advanced placement computer science class he began working on an application that could help the school administration with a growing problem.

“Essentially, it is an anonymous way for students around campus to report vaping,” Komjathy said.

Though vaping has been touted by some as an alternative to smoking cigarettes, educators have seen vaping as a dangerous distraction. At Rosemont Middle School and Crescenta Valley High School, vaping is an issue.

“I think it has increased,” said Rosemont Principal Scott Anderle in a previous interview with CVW.

Komjathy worked with a partner, Krish Shah, and the two developed the vaping app during their AP computer class.

“It took us about six months to make the app. It has algorithms to filter spam,” Komjathy said.

The algorithms are collected and the data will help the school administration find the most likely areas that vaping is occurring.

Komjathy said the pair kept the development of the app quiet, not sharing what they were doing in order to keep outside influences to a minimum.

“We weren’t concerned for our safety, but we didn’t want others to influence our original thoughts,” he said.

They started working on the app in last year’s class and it was ready to go in the first couple of months of the 2019-2020 school year.

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “Since we released our names, people have come up and said they were happy we have done something like this.”

The app is easy to download. Posters that include a QR code are hung around school. Students scan the code, which takes them to the app where they can anonymously report when vaping is taking place.

Komjathy has presented the app at a meeting of the Glendale Unified School District board of education and, although it is now only in use at CVHS, they hope to take it to other schools.

CVHS students seem to be supportive of the app.

“We usually get about 100 hits a week,” Komjathy said.