At just 22 years old, Shabinda Sarkaria (but call her Shay) is not only the creator of a slick new chemistry app – she’s also the only Australian woman to win the Apple 2025 Swift Student Challenge.
Alongside her passion for sesame seed ice cream, southern accents and solving jigsaw puzzles, Shabinda recently showcased her love of coding at Apple’s WDC25 Swift Student Challenge – a global competition, run by Apple, that invites young developers to flex their coding muscles by creating app playgrounds that are creative, innovative, or socially impactful. This year, from over 350 winners selected worldwide, eight were from Australia. And, only one of them was female. Enter Shay.
“It felt surreal. I was honestly just shocked at first, I kept rereading the email like, wait… what?” says Shabinda. “Finding out I was the only Aussie woman took a second to sink in. I know so many Australian women who are just as capable, if not more. And, I really hope there are more of us next year.”
The University of Sydney computer science student lives in Blacktown, a western suburb of Sydney, and she first fell in love with tech not through school, but through YouTube tutorials.
“My interest in coding actually started with video editing back in high school,” she says. “I taught myself how to use and navigate After Effects to create visual effects for personal video projects. And, over time, I found myself wondering how tools like After Effects were actually built.”
That curiosity eventually led her to computer science – and later, to Swift, Apple’s programming language. Over the summer holidays, fresh from finishing a front-end programming course, she decided to try something new. “This challenge was the perfect way to apply my knowledge in a technical and creative way.”
Her app, Element Explorer, makes chemistry fun, visual, and interactive – especially for students who may find it intimidating or, like Shabinda herself, never got to study it formally. “Taking chemistry as a subject wasn’t an option for me in high school. There simply weren’t enough students interested in it,” she explains. “I realised if I never had the opportunity to learn anything, I should take it into my own hands and learn it myself. That’s what led me to create Element Explorer, it was more for me to learn, reflect and be proud of.”
The app is part periodic table, part quiz, part game, and all designed by Shabinda from scratch using SwiftUI. “Element Explorer is an interactive periodic table app. I used SwiftUI to create an interactive table where you can tap elements to see animations of atomic structure, fun facts, and properties. It also includes a quiz and a mix-and-match game to help reinforce learning through play.”
Of course, there were a few bugs – literally and figuratively – along the way. “A lot of my challenges revolved around code design,” she says. “I realised I was a messy coder so to make things easier, I had to modularise my code to keep it maintainable and extendable… Once I did that, everything started clicking, I knew my code like it was my second brain.”
While Shabinda never set out to be a role model, she’s aware of the power of visibility. Especially in a field like tech. “I sometimes forget that in spaces like these, I stand out. I’ve never seen myself as more or less capable because I’m a woman, I judge myself based on what I can do. But this reminded me that to others, my identity often comes first. I’m a woman, then I’m in tech. It made me realise how important visibility is, even if it’s not something I always think about.”
Now, she’s keen to pay that inspiration forward. “Start small, stay curious, and don’t be afraid to be bad at it at first,” she advises other young women interested in coding. “Find something you’re excited about whether it’s games, art, or solving problems and build around that. And don’t be afraid to ask questions, Google everything, or make a million mistakes. That’s how you learn.”
As for what’s next? Shabinda plans to polish up Element Explorer and hopes to release it publicly. She’s also dreaming big – possibly a career at Apple, Canva, or a startup where she can blend design and code. “Whether it’s an educational app with cute animations or a game with a strong visual style, I love projects where I can code the logic and also shape the visual storytelling,” she says. “That’s the sweet spot.”
One thing’s for sure: whether she’s in the lab, the studio, or the dev room, Shabinda is on a mission to make science and tech more accessible, more beautiful, and more fun for everyone. With the Apple 2025 Swift Student Challenge one of the first steps on her journey.
