Alex Kern is a self-taught programmer who started coding at the age of 9 with PHP and later learned C, Java, and Ruby. He joined his high school's FIRST robotics team as a lead web developer and robot programmer in 8th grade and accepted his first job at an LA-based web startup while also interning at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to work on the Mars Science Laboratory. Kern is now attending UC Berkeley as a freshman, but currently works on open source projects, including Blastee, an app that uses Twilio to alert emergency contacts in times of need. The app was created during Hack for Change and helps users quickly connect with pre-selected contacts who can provide assistance.