The 37-year-old Curtin University PhD student is one of 200 talented students who competed against thousands to win the highly sought-after scholarship, to attend the Worldwide Developers Conference, worth $1600.
Mr White said he was thrilled and honoured to win the scholarship, as even securing a ticket through the ballot system was a long shot.
‘Competition was tough with some of the most talented students competing internationally for one of the 200 scholarships,’ Mr White said.
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READ NOW‘I’m also one of the oldest winners, with many of the developers being ‘wunderkinds’ aged just 13, so this is a real coup for ‘mature’ students across the globe.’
Mr White said Apple announced the conference dates in April, which left competitors a short amount of time to submit their application.
‘We had about two weeks to make our app and submit it and we found out early May,’ he said.
For his entry, Mr White created an app about himself, exploring his journey to becoming a developer in his 30s. ‘You submit the app and the code and also tell them about any apps you have on the app store,’ he said.
Over the past four years, Mr White created a number of successful health apps, including Screenkeeper an app to help people keep track of cancer screens; Feedsafe, an app designed for breastfeeding mothers and Pier 2 Peer, a nutritional app built for his research project.
Mr White will fly to San Francisco next month to attend the weeklong conference led by esteemed Apple engineers.