Bright computer screens surround the inside of AP Computer Science Principles teacher Seneca Hart’s classroom at CHS9. Each screen has a unique character being designed and programmed.

Soon, four of these screens will code against the world. 

During the fall of 2025, Carnegie Mellon University hosted their annual international Computer Science Creative Task Challenge. The competition was established to bring the young talent of coding and programming from all around the world into the spotlight. 

CHS9 students Dhruv Rajvanshi and Roshan Adapa emerged among the crowned winner teams of the CS Academy Creative Task Challenge.

As the competition approached last fall, Hart put forth this opportunity to her students, all of whom participated in the project without knowing what was ahead.

“It started off just as a project that Ms. Hart had assigned all of us,” Rajvanshi said. “We never imagined winning the whole thing, first place, too.”

The long hours of designing, programming and coding a fictional character from visual media were put in for an unknown goal: to be selected for the competition. 

“We chose to design Luffy from One Piece,” Adapa said. “We thought that Luffy would be a character that would bring everyone together. A lot of people watch One Piece around the world and it can even be established as a kind of a global culture.”

Beyond the achievement of winning international recognition, the team of first-place contestants realized more about their skills than they had before.

“I believe my favorite part of the entire experience was realizing how much patience it takes to master something, and how much patience we both had collectively,” Rajvanshi said. “It was amazing seeing the entire project come together.”

The team also learned that an attributed set of skills works great by itself, but is monumental alongside another one. 

“The combination of our skill set and ideas was one we never knew we had altogether. They played out perfectly exactly when we needed them,” Adapa said.

One might not usually expect that not just first place, but also one of the second place winner teams of the competition reign from Coppell, at the very same campus. 

CHS9 students Siya Mehta and Ishani Dash were among the challenge’s second place teams, sporting elaborate coding skills that placed them on the silver. 

The task was not just another assignment for Dash and Mehta, but an opportunity to expand on their favorite area of the subject. 

“I was always interested in web design and I’ve always been passionate about graphics and web has been quite tied into it,” Mehta said. “I always saw my brother doing computer science and funnily enough I would say it runs in the family.”

Besides the liking, there were minimal obstacles, which were understood and overcome efficiently. 

“It wasn’t even the major things that were difficult,” Dash said. “It was things like putting up shadows for our character and I’ve realized it’s not very easy to program them in.”

The recognition from the university alone had an exciting aspect for both the winning teams, some of it verbally expressed by the latter.

“Having won a competition by Carnegie Mellon felt surreal,” Dash said. “It’s fair to say that we didn’t know what we were going into at first and we also had the thought of not fully knowing what we’re going into.”

The hopes of continuing in the field of Computer Science were sparked amongst both teams, igniting both hope and concern for the future of the subject. 

“I’m hoping to major in computer science, mainly cybersecurity and am excited to see how it will plan out.” Adapa said. 

Concern about the future of the field was also raised amidst conversation. 

“Everyone is talking about how AI is taking over computer science jobs and that does worry me,” Mehta said. “It stresses me out to some degree that a field I’m passionate about and want to pursue is going to be taken up by something non-emotional like AI, but I’m hoping for the best.” 

From a classroom filled with bright screens to a stage recognized by Carnegie Mellon University, the students proved that success indefinitely does not have a timeline.  As their achievements remain monumental for Coppell, one thing is clear: the future of computer science has hard-working students out to reshape it.

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