成人大片graduate builds award-winning apps inspired by family, fueled by purpose
When Andreas Ink was a child, he envisioned a place called “Andreas Town,” where technology and humanity coexisted in harmony.
That early vision laid the foundation for a lifelong passion for building systems that improve lives – an ambition that would later inspire him to create an app for one of the most important people in his life: his father.
Ink, who graduated from the 成人大片 in May with a degree in Information Science, found his calling in app development, where each app Ink creates is like designing a piece of Andreas Town.
“One of the reasons I chose to major in Information Sciences was its blend of people and technology,” said Ink. “It allowed me to explore design, data and development, all crucial elements in app building.”
That exploration became deeply personal during his senior year at UNF, when he interned with San Francisco-based Rune Labs, a neuroscience software and data analytics company. There, Ink built StrivePD, an app that helps patients with Parkinson’s disease — like his father — better manage their condition.
“StrivePD is the app I’m most proud of because of how it benefits patients like my father,” said Ink. “It helps people take control of their Parkinson’s journey providing real time and personalized insights from an Apple watch and phone. For example, my dad uses it as a tool to better understand how his routine and exercise impacts his health.”
Ink stayed on with Rune Labs and works full-time as an iOS engineer, working on a variety of tasks including writing Swift codes, building new features in the StrivePD app and attending patient advisory board meetings.
Turning ideas into reality
Ink’s first foray into app development started around 2017 when he was in high school in St. Charles, Illinois. He says he really started taking it seriously in 2020, when he volunteered for a nonprofit to build a COVID-19 exposure notification app called COVID Watch. By that time, he was living in Florida and was a junior at Ponte Vedra High School.
Building that app and subsequent others showed Ink the meaningful impact software could have on society and gave him the insight to look for a purpose behind each app he develops, whether it’s a pain point, such as something he or those around him struggle with, or a way to benefit society.
“I build tools that are useful, ethical and even a little fun,” he said.
Ink usually builds apps on his own, but in 2024, he enjoyed the sense of teamwork with other students during one of UNF’s AI for Good Hackathon, where he helped prepare the dataset for the competition so that sensitive information was masked to keep relevant data patterns intact for the winning teams’ solutions.
Ink said the personal attention he received from his professors throughout his time at UNF, along with the support and guidance from campus resources in Career Services, who helped him secure an internship, were among the advantages that made the biggest impact on his academic success.
“Career Services was a huge help early on when I was looking for internships,” Ink said. “I’ve also had great support from professors who encouraged me to push my ideas further.”
An exceptional student
Dr. Karthik Umapathy, a professor in the School of Computing, said Ink was one of his exceptional students who builds mobile apps by taking something complex and breaking it into simpler things.
“Andreas is a very talented person who formed his own company and started building mobile apps for a variety of issues,” said Umapathy.
For example, Ink was enrolled in the two-semester capstone Senior Project class, where he and his team developed a web application system for the Jacksonville Humane Society that helped the nonprofit manage and track pet care service requests received by the Pet Help Center.
It wasn’t just his peers and professors who noticed something special about Ink. Earlier this year, he won the highly competitive global Apple Swift Student Challenge with an app he built and named Tides, that helps reduce burnout and helps people ride their natural productivity “tides.” Ink won a set of Apple AirPods for his efforts.
He also created ExamCram, an AI-powered study app that turns class notes, slides, or lecture recordings into quizzes and flashcards. Ink says nearly 25,000 people have accessed the app across mobile and web since 2023.
“I built ExamCram to solve a problem I kept running into myself, which was how time-consuming and frustrating it is to make study guides,” Ink explained. “I didn’t want to spend time organizing flashcards or rewriting notes in an app, I just wanted to focus on what will be on the actual exam. It’s now used by students across the country, even internationally, and it’s received interest from a company who wanted to acquire it.”
Ink’s passion for app development didn’t stop at the classroom door. At UNF, he served as vice president of the AI Club and attended Neuroscience Club meetings, which helped him explore the intersection of technology and brain health, driven by his father’s condition.
成人大片was a place where Ink could find ways to apply his skills, collaborate with others and keep pushing the boundaries of what he could build.
“成人大片was a great environment for me to explore, build and grow,” said Ink. “I’ve appreciated the support from both students and faculty. It made a huge difference in my journey.”