Bright future ahead for Christian

CHRISTIAN Privitelli has won a prestigious award from Apple, joining just 350 winners worldwide.
The 16-year-old is one of only 10 winning students from Australia.
The bright Year 10 St Ignatius student entered the competition as part of this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) held annually in California.
Each year, Apple gives up to 350 talented students the opportunity to attend the San Jose event as a scholarship winner. In 2020, entrants were tasked with building an interactive playground to showcase their creativity and technical abilities.
Christian created an augmented reality solar system that can be used as a teaching device. It allows the user to select a planet, learn information about the chosen planet and then complete a quiz at the end.
“I used ARKit (an augmented reality platform for IOS devices) and CoreML (a machine learning framework) to create a virtual and interactive planetarium,” Christian said.
“I’ve always loved technology and Apple, I didn’t know I was eligible to apply sooner, I thought you had to be 18 otherwise I definitely would’ve. I thought this year I’d give it ago because it’s something I enjoy doing.”
Christian said he’s always set his alarm at 2am to watch WWDC and was familiar with the
student challenge.
“I didn’t know I was going to win but I tried my best. I worked on my entry for about two to three hours every day for three weeks.
“I’ve always been interested in technology and coding. It’s something I like doing. I thought creating something that had an educational element might increase my chances of winning.”
Christian said although he was disappointed that he won’t be able to attend the conference physically, receiving a collector’s item Apple jacket and pins was pretty exciting.
“It’s really cool (the jacket), there’s only 350 of them in the world, which is pretty amazing. When I’m older I’d love to do something with technology, something with software or engineering.”
Proud mum Marija said her son has always shown a deeper fascination into how things work.
“Even when he was a one, he would turn his toy truck upside down and examine the wheels, he wanted to know how it worked.
“He was reading Harry Potter in Grade 1, could recite the alphabet and was writing words as a three-year-old. He’s always been really bright and we’re just really proud of him.
“As a parent you always think your child is talented but it’s nice to see his hard work pay off. This award confirmed he’s on the right track and doing a great job with something he’s really passionate about.”