(Cross-posted from the Google Science Fair Blog and on the Google Students Blog)
From winged keels to water turbines, from prosthetic limbs to programming in pure English, it’s been a fascinating two weeks for our Google Science Fair judges. It was no easy task to select 15 finalists out of the 60 semi-finalists—all of the students’ projects asked interesting questions, many focused on real-world problems and some produced groundbreaking science that challenged current conventions.
After much deliberation we’re happy to announce the 15 finalists:
Age 13 - 14
Anand Srinivasan, USA
Daniel Arnold, USA
Lauren Hodge, USA
Luke Taylor, South Africa
Michelle Guo, USA
Age 15 - 16
Dora Chen, USA
Gavin Ovsak, USA
Harine Ravichandran, India
Naomi Shah, USA
Skanda Koppula, USA
Age 17 - 18
Christopher Neilsen, Canada
Matthew Morris, USA
Shaun Lim Hsien Yang, Singapore
Shree Bose, USA
Vighnesh Leonardo Shiv, USA
In July, these finalists will come to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to present their projects to our panel of finalist judges, including science luminaries, technology innovators and one Nobel laureate. They’ll compete for prizes that include $100,000 in scholarship funds, real-life experiences at CERN, Google, LEGO and Scientific American, and a trip to the Galapagos Islands courtesy of National Geographic Expeditions. The winners will be announced at our celebration gala that same evening, beginning at 6:00 p.m. PDT July 11. The event will be streamed live on our YouTube channel so make sure to tune in.
In addition, over the past two weeks people around the world have had the opportunity to vote for their favorite projects in our online voting gallery. We’ve had more than 100,000 votes and the competition was really tight, but we’re happy to announce that Nimal Subramanian is the People’s Choice Award winner. Nimal will receive a $10,000 scholarship. Congratulations Nimal—the public really loved your project!
Congratulations to all the finalists and the People’s Choice Award winner. We look forward to meeting the finalists at Google in July.