A team of computing and information science students has advanced to the finals of a national student coding contest sponsored by the educational publisher Pearson. The competition is to design innovative learning applications that integrate with existing Pearson educational software.

The team of Yen-Chieh Huang ’17, Nikita DuBunov ’17 and Jorg Doku ’17 entered an app called MINT, an essay editor that freshens content by assessing uniqueness of words, providing definition assistance and helping writers find articles to support their work.

The MINT essay application searches for new content on the same page where the writer is editing the essay.

“This is a main feature for MINT, as it reduces the unnecessary movement from page to page and from search engine to search engine,” said Huang.

The team will present its entry at the Pearson offices in Denver on Feb. 5, when the winners will be announced. Cash prizes up to $5,000 will be awarded as will as internship opportunities with Pearson, which owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eCollege, Longman and Poptropica.