Teenager wins award for app to help solo commuters feel safer

Washington

MEDHA Gupta sometimes felt uneasy making the 20-minute walk to her home from the corner where the school bus dropped her off in Herndon, Virginia, especially during the colder months when it would get dark early.

Her mother had a suggestion: write an app. Divya Gupta was half-kidding, but Medha, a sophomore at Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, took the challenge seriously. So she went to work. "I knew I had a problem I needed to solve," said Medha, 16.

The result was Safe Travel, an app she designed to help commuters feel more secure when travel…