Over the past decade, the number of people watching the Olympic Games has been on the decline. While the average Olympic Primetime viewership on all NBC platforms, including streaming services, was 27 million for the 2016 Games in Rio, that number dipped by roughly a third for the 2018 Games. By 2020 the figure had dropped to 15.6 million and in 2022, just 11.4 million people tuned in.
This pattern is concerning for organizers who are preparing to bring the Olympics to Los Angeles in 2028, said Ashley Kim, a fourth-year applied mathematics major with a specialization in computing, who will graduate from UCLA next month.
With just five years left until the opening ceremonies, UCLA undergraduates Ashley Kim, Shiyu Ye, Srinjana Sriram, Sanchit Agarwal, Ruiying Liu, Tori Wang and Zaid Bustami have created a digital solution called MedalUp, which aims to engage audiences around the world, especially those in younger demographics, through an app that will provide gamified experiences and competitions within close communities. Users will collect points in various ways and earn coupons and rewards for various products from participating corporate sponsors. MedalUp is now in the hands of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will be working to take it from concept to a fully developed product.
The team was part of the inaugural Spring Quarter Innovation Challenge, a six-week collaborative effort between the UCLA Epicenter for Action Research, UCLA IT Services, the UCLA Career Center, AWS and Slalom that introduces students to new ways to use technology to help address critical problems and opportunities facing the university, its students and Los Angeles.
“It gives students the opportunity to translate theoretical knowledge into practical application, gain exposure to industry experts, further their skills and technical expertise to gain a competitive edge on the job market, and obtain hands on learning and ‘real world’ experience as a member of a team working in collaboration on a technology solution,” said Jennifer Ferry, assistant chief information officer for UCLA IT, who served as a program advisor.
The challenge culminated with six teams pitching various app ideas to a panel of judges, including Lucy Avetisyan, associate vice chancellor and chief information officer for UCLA IT.
Raffi Simonian, executive director of the UCLA Epicenter for Action Research, which administered the innovation challenge, says that it is important for college graduates to augment their academic education by immersing themselves in experience-based learning so that they can be as prepared as possible for the expectations of their future employers. He says there is a strong discrepancy between how prepared college chief academic officers in this country believe students are prepared for careers upon graduation (95%), and how prepared business owners actually find newly minted college graduates to be (11%).
“There’s about an 85% gap, and that’s the gap I’m trying to fill so that the students are professionally ready when they graduate, with the skills they’ll need to excel,” he said.
Winning team member Ashley Kim, a fourth-year applied mathematics major with a specialization in computing said her involvement with this challenge has helped her grow in a variety of ways, which is particularly important as she prepares for life after graduation.
“Graduating from UCLA as a co-creator of MedalUp genuinely means a lot to me, both personally and professionally,” she said. “This result demonstrates my passion and interest in the technological field, where I hope to engage further after graduation. It also reflects my ability to design and strategize a real-world product that will bring entertainment to the users. Considering MedalUp as the product that stands as the first step of my accomplishment, I hope to become a professional leader who can further idealize and create essential products or technologies for the world.”
