Churchill Secondary student Pranav Mruthyunjayan's panache for programming took him all the way to the epi-centre of the high-tech world: Apple's annual developers conference.

Pranav was among the 5,000 app developers, programmers and computer engineers in attendance, after being awarded a $2,000 bursary from Apple to attend its 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC19) held June 3 to 7. Like the thousands of student-applicants the world over, he submitted an original computer application designed in Swift - a programming language developed by Apple. 

"WWDC 19 was amazing! It was definitely an unforgettable experience even if it was overwhelming at the time," Pranav exclaims. "I learnt many new things by attending the sessions, which there were many of throughout the week."

Designing iOS and web apps is a passion of this Vancouver student,which began from a very young age. 

"I've been interested in coding since I was 7 when I marvelled at the cool things you could do. My mom was a software developer and she taught me some fundamentals as she worked on projects."

Currently he's a member of the Churchill Python programming club, which he says is great because it's a community with like-minded peers where members help one another. "We all can add to the discussion about a problem or brainstorm solutions together."

He's also interested in machine learning, artificial intelligence, Python and web frameworks. Pranav's future ambitions include launching his own company after attending university. 

With his eye on that horizon, attending WWD19 gave him some clear sign-posts to draw upon moving forward. 

"My friends and I went to many labs to talk with engineers and solve any problems with new technologies."

Ahead of Pranav's travel to the conference, he was also featured in GeekWire which profiled him as a Geek of the Week. 

Check out Pranav's winning WWDC 19 Scholarship Submission.