Lenny Khazan wins again

For the second consecutive year Woodmere Middle School eighth grader Lenny Khazan won a $1,600 scholarship to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco from June 10-14.

All 5,000 tickets to the conference sold out in 71 seconds, according to Khazan’s father, Cyril, who accompanied his son to the event. “I enjoyed the atmosphere of Silicon Valley once again,” Cyril said. “So much positive energy and cool ideas.”

Last year, Khazan, 14, who is a member of the Woodmere Middle School Robotics Team and Math Olympiad, said when he applied for the scholarship he had to answer a few questions such as describing an important lesson or key moment in developing apps for Apple products.

This year he had to demonstrate his programming skills by creating an app about himself. “I was really surprised that I had won the scholarship,” he said. “When the scholarship was first announced, I was fairly confident — however as people started to post some of their scholarship application apps on YouTube and Facebook, I soon realized how fierce the competition would be. Regardless, I kept working on my submission until the last minute, and ended up winning.”

At the WWDC, Khazan attended workshops, listened to several speakers, including Bill Nye the Science Guy and viewed new Apple products not yet released. “Attending the conference again was fantastic,” he said.