PLEASANTON, Calif. (KRON) — When six students from Foothill High School’s engineering class were sent home from school because of the COVID-19 outbreak, the teens thought … what do we do now? The group seniors and juniors decided that they wanted to help their community in a potentially life-saving way.

Growing up near Silicon Valley, this group of 16 and 17 year olds doesn’t think much of already having their own startup, Nize Systems. And when the coronavirus arrived, the teens combined their techie minds to design a very impressive COVID-19 tracking and resource website for the San Francisco Bay Area.

One of the students, Kishore Hariharan, told KRON4, “Our project began when our district decided to close schools and move to a remote learning system. During these difficult times, we wanted to help the Bay Area however we could, so with all this extra time on our hands, we decided to come up with a solution that provides our community with the tools and resources to stay up to date on the situation. We started off six weeks ago with a simple idea in mind that eventually became what it is now.”

“We’ve received feedback from the community which has helped us and made it possible to make the website as user-friendly as possible. We all know each other from the engineering and computer science classes in Foothill, which made it possible for us to come together and make something that helps the people in our community. Specifically, teachers like Mr. Johnson and Mr. Friesen have allowed us to use their classrooms to collaborate during the school year, and Mr. Johnson has been in contact with us giving feedback,” Hariharan said.

“Currently, BACT (Bay Area COVID-19 Tracker) focuses its efforts in not only tracking cases related to the COVID-19 pandemic but bringing the end-user the necessary resources to stay safe during these times. What sets BACT apart from other trackers is our focus on the San Francisco Bay Area itself. Instead of providing users with lots of generalized information, we wanted to cut through that and make it more applicable to our community. We’re currently working additional features such as: displaying overall trends, community announcements, and shortage tracking,” he said.

The COVID-19 Tracking Team

Logan Dickey (12th grade)

Tarun Prakash (12th grade)

Vishal Muthuraja (11th grade)

Jacob Bolano (12th grade)

Prem Giridhar (11th grade)

Kishore Hariharan (11th grade)

The teen techies are always open new suggestions and requests from users through their website’s feedback section, or email nizesystems@gmail.com