Editor's note: This year we honored some of the brightest young minds in the Bay Area innovation sector as part of our Inno Under 25 feature. Check out all the profiles from this year's honorees here.
It all started with a passion for skincare. Unlike other teenagers going to the mall or catching up on the latest episode of “Never Have I Ever,” India Poetzscher said she wanted to learn about environmental toxins and their impacts on the body’s largest organ. Through an independent study at University High School in San Francisco she created SkinChem, an app that gives users a risk score based on their location. The score shows users how environmental conditions like sun exposure and air pollution threaten their skin health on a given day and time. Besides being a high school senior, Poetzscher — a 2023 winner of the Congressional App Challenge — is also doing research at the University of California at San Francisco.
India Poetzcher, a recipient of the Inno Under 25 awards for an App she created called SkinChem which measures how environmental toxins affect human health through the skin.
India Poetzcher
- Age: 17
- Education: San Francisco University High School, senior
- Residence: San Francisco
- Role: Creator
- Company: SkinChem
How did you go from developing this app to winning the Congressional App Challenge competition?
I didn’t have much experience with app development, it more so just started with my interest in this area. So I had to learn from scratch, and I watched a lot of tutorials. Once the [independent study] semester ended, since this was a school project, I had a few features of the app but I wanted to keep working on it and submit it into the competition. So I spent the summer continuing to work on it more and adding a few new features. I made a few edits here and there since [submitting] but I do want to keep working on [the app] and add new features, more customizations.
What does it mean to be so young and get recognition from Nancy Pelosi?
That was a really cool moment. The best part of it was how when I started this project I had no experience, but I had an interest in this area. And so that interest took me all the way to meeting Nancy Pelosi. That was really rewarding. It was just great to be able to share my knowledge with somebody who has so much power and can help me spread [awareness on] this issue.
What would you say was the biggest challenge you came across?
On the coding side, I had no experience with Swift, which is the iOS language. So figuring out how to do certain things I wasn’t sure how to, like [upgrading] to a nicer UI. On the research side, I struggled because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to frame the app, whether I wanted to focus on the chemicals themselves, or the diseases. I ended up doing both. You can choose to look at one or the other, and figure out how they’re linked together. So there was a lot since it was so open ended, and I hadn’t really seen anything like an any app like this before.
What’s next for you?
I want to share this issue. I will probably keep working on [the app]. I’ve gotten some feedback from users, so I want to incorporate their feedback and make some modifications. [Also] I’m doing a couple other projects in this area related to our skin and the environment. I’ll probably continue with this in college studying some sort of bio, environmental chemistry or computer science.
