The national baby formula shortage has greatly impacted families in communities across the country, so the Women’s Legislative Caucus of Maryland sought to create an outlet for families to crowdsource formula sightings and also do inventory checks in real time. Delegate Lesley Lopez reached out to Adam Lederer (Clarksburg High School Class of 2022) and Matthew Nanas (Wheaton High School Class of 2022), the young men who created MoCoVax.com last year to help residents who were struggling to find appointments for the Covid-19 vaccine.
DMV Formula was made at the request of the Women’s Legislative Caucus of Maryland. Delegate Lopez reached out to Adam Lederer to see if he and Matthew would be interested in programming a website to help local parents find baby formula across the DMV. The website uses crowdsourcing information, allowing users to upload pictures of baby formula in-store locations. DMV Formula also has an inventory checker for Target, Buy Buy Baby, and Bed Bath and Beyond.
Adam was responsible for coding the stock checker. He used web scraping technology (REST APIs) to achieve tracking inventory for various retailers. Adam is cohorted with Clarksburg High School’s class of 2022 and plans to attend Montgomery College this fall. Matthew was responsible for coding the frontend and crowd sourcing feature of the web app. He used the Google Maps API on top of cloud resources to scale and store data. Matthew was cohorted with Wheaton High School’s class of 2022 and plans to attend UMD this fall.
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