The first Google Science Fair was announced in January 2011; entries were due on April 7, 2011, and judging occurred in July 2011. The competition is open to 13- to 18-year-old students around the globe, who formulate a hypothesis, perform an experiment, and present their results.[2][3] All students must have an internet connection and a free Google Account to participate, and the projects must be in English, German, Italian, Spanish, or French.[5] The final submission must include ten sections, which are the summary, an "About Me" page, the steps of the project, and a works cited page.[6] Entries are judged on eight core criteria, which include the student's presentation, question, hypothesis, research, experiment, data, observations, and conclusion.[7] Prizes are awarded to three finalists. The grand prize includes a National Geographic trip to the Galapagos Islands, and a US$50,000 scholarship;[8] finalists will receive a US$15,000 scholarship and assorted packages from sponsoring organizations.[9] While Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford University in California, they created Google in January 1996 as a research project; Google employee Tom Oliveri highlighted the company's early days: "Science fairs help students to explore their vision and curiosity through science. Our company was founded on an experiment. We firmly believe that science can change the world", he stated.[10] As of October 28, 2019, no details for the next Google Science Fair have been released.
Guest interviews
The on-line site also contains a number of highlighted guest interviews with selected individuals, each well established and prominent in their field of science, with the aim being for them to act as inspiration to young students.[11] The individuals chosen include Mitch Resnick, Spencer Wells, Kevin Warwick, and Mariette DiChristina.
2011 Winners
Shree Bose, a 17-year-old girl from Fort Worth, Texas, won the grand prize and $50,000 for her research on the chemotherapy drug, cisplatin, that is commonly taken by women with ovarian cancer, tackling the problem of cancer cells growing resistant to cisplatin over time.[12]
Naomi Shah of Portland, OR, won the age 15–16 category with a study of the effects of air quality on lungs, particularly for people who have asthma. Ms. Shah recruited 103 test subjects, performed 24-hour air quality measurements at their homes and workplaces and had each blow into a device that measured the force of their breath.
Lauren Hodge of York, PA, won the age 13–14 category for research on whether marinades reduce the amount of cancer-causing compounds produced by the grilling of meat. She found that lemon juice and brown sugar cut the level of carcinogens sharply, while soy sauce increased them.
People around the world (90 countries) had the opportunity to vote for their favorite projects in Google's online voting gallery. Google has had more than 100,000 votes [13] and the competition was really tight. Nimal Subramanian won the People's Choice Award for receiving the most among the 60 semi-finalists. The public really loved Nimal's project on Cancer Busters.[14] Nimal received a $10,000 scholarship.[15]
2012 Winners
Brittany Wenger, who was 17, won the grand prize with her "Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer". Designed to noninvasively diagnose malignant cancerous tumors, it successfully detected over 99% of malignant breast tumors in a test set. She received $50,000, a trip to the Galapagos Islands, mentoring and internship opportunities for winning the competition.[16]
Iván Hervías Rodríguez, Marcos Ochoa, and Sergio Pascual, all of Spain, won the 15-16 age group using microscopy to examine microscopic creatures in aquatic ecosystems.
Jonah Kohn won the age 13-14 group by designing and building a device designed to enhance the listening experience of those with hearing loss. His device attached to different parts of the body, translating sound into tactile stimulation.[17]
2013 Winners
The winners of the 2013 Google Science Fair were:
13-14 age category: Viney Kumar (Australia) — The PART (Police and Ambulances Regulating Traffic) Program. Viney's project looked for new ways to provide drivers with more notice when an emergency vehicle is approaching, so they can take evasive action to get out of the emergency vehicle's way.
15-16 age category: Ann Makosinski (Canada) — The Hollow Flashlight. Using Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air, Ann designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts.
17-18 age category Grand Prize Winner: Eric Chen (USA) — Computer-aided Discovery of Novel Influenza Endonuclease Inhibitors to Combat Flu Pandemic. Combining computer modeling and biological studies, Eric's project looks at influenza endonuclease inhibitors as leads for a new type of anti-flu medicine, effective against all influenza viruses including pandemic strains.
2014 Winners
The 2014 Google Science Fair started accepting entries on February 12, 2014, and the entries closed on May 13, 2014. And the results for the local, regional and Science in Action award nominees were declared. The Grand Prize was won by three girls from Ireland, Ciara Judge (16), Emer Hickey (16) and Sophie Healy-Thow (17). They were the first group winners of the competition and the youngest winners to date (they also won the 15-16 age category prize). Their project was entitled 'Combating the Global Food Crisis: Diazotroph Bacteria as a Cereal Crop Growth Promoter.'
The 13-14 age category was won by Mihir Garimella (14) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a project titled 'Fruit-fly Inspired Robots.' Hayley Todesco (17) of Canada won the 17-18 age category with her project titled 'Cleaning up Oil Sands Waste.'
Along with the overall prizes for each category, a number of special awards were also announced. Kenneth Shinozuka (15) was declared as the Science In Action Award winner in recognition of the practical potential of his project 'Wearable Sensors for Aging Society.' Arsh Shah Dilbagi (16) from India won the Voter's Choice Award for creating an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device that converts breath into words, enabling mute people to speak.[18] Local Award winners included Shannon Tan (18), who won the award in Singapore for his research on using treated materials from crustacean shells to purify wastewater from heavy industries.[19]
2015 Winners
The 2015 Google Science Fair closed for entries on May 18, 2015, with regional finalists announced in London on July 7, 2015. These included Lauren McKenzie (14) who built an automatic soil watering system, Shadab Karnachi (14) who designed a low-cost gaming device for people with visual impairments, Nishanth Kumar (16) who designed a low-cost 'hands-free' mouse for use by people with developmental disabilities, and Peter He (14) who developed an innovative wireless virtual reality system.[20]
The global finalists[21] representing 10 countries were announced on August 4, 2015 and were as follows:
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Anela Arifi and Ilda Ismaili - A system for alternative fuel production and storage using chicken feathers
Canada
Isabella O'Brien - Trouble in Paradise: Recycling shell waste to reduce ocean acidification
Calvin Rieder - Extracting clean water from air: solar-powered solution for providing potable water
France
Eliott Sarrey - Bot2Karot: gardening through a smartphone-activated robot
India
Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai - Absorbing water pollutants with corn cobs
Lithuania
Laura Steponavičiūtė - Detecting the environmental dangers of nanomaterials
Russia
Alexey Tarasov - Using ternary logic on current electronics
Singapore
Girish Kumar - RevUp: improving learning through auto-generated study questions
Zhilin Wang - Zinc air batteries for affordable, renewable energy storage
Taiwan
Wei-Tung Chen - Calculating the 3D position of an object from a single source
Yo Hsu and Jing-Tong Wang - Knock on fuel: detecting impurities in gasoline with sound pattern analysis
United Kingdom
Krtin Nithiyanandam - Improving diagnosis and treatment for Alzheimer’s with new molecular “Trojan Horse”
Matthew Reid - The ArduOrbiter: a lightweight, open source satellite
United States
Anika Cheerla - Automated and accurate early-diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease
Anurudh Ganesan - VAXXWAGON: a reliable way to store and transport vaccines
Olivia Hallisey [WINNER] - Temperature-independent, inexpensive and rapid detection of Ebola
Deepika Kurup - Solar powered silver combating bacteria in drinking water
Pranav Sivakumar - Automated search for gravitationally lensed quasars
Adriel Sumathipala - Creating a simple diagnostic tool for earlier detection of cardiac disease
The winners were announced on September 21, 2015. The Grand Prize was won by Olivia Hallisey (16) with her project ‘Temperature-Independent, Portable, and Rapid Field Detection of Ebola via a Silk-Derived Lateral-Flow System’. The Google Technologist Award was won by Girish Kumar (17) for his project ‘Revup: Automatically Generating Questions from Educational Texts’ and the Incubator Award was won by Elliott Sarrey (14) with his project ‘Bot2karot: Manage Your Vegetable Garden via Your Smartphone’. The Lego Education Builder Award won by Anurudh Ganesan (15), the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award won by Pranav Sivakumar (15), the Scientific American Innovator Award won by Krtin Nithiyanandam (15), the National Geographic Explorer Award won by Deepika Kurup (17) and the Community Impact Award won by Lalita Prasida.[18]
2016 Winners
The 2016 Google Science Fair closed its entries on May 17, 2016, the Global 16 Finalist were announced on August 11, 2016. The final event took place during 24 to 27 September 2016 at Mountain View, California.[22] Sixteen finalists competed for top five awards. The first two rounds had two age groups 13-15 and 16–18. However, unlike previous years, top awards during the finalist event did not distinguish between the two age groups of the previous rounds, thus making it particularly challenging event for the contestant compared to all previous years.
The Grand Prize was won by Kiara Nirghin (16) of South Africa for her project 'Fighting Drought with Fruit'.[23] The Lego Education Builder award was won by Anushka Naiknaware (13) of United States, the youngest contestant to win a top award ever, for 'Smart Wound Care for the Future'.[24] The National Geographic Explorer award was won by Mphatso Simbao (18) of Zambia.[25] The Scientific Innovator Award was won by a team of three for 'Fighting Foam Waste with Recycled Filters' from the United States [Ashton Cofer (14), Luke Clay (14) and Julie Bray (14)]. The Virgin Galactic Pioneer award was won by Charlie Fenske (16) for 'Making Rockets more Efficient', also from the United States.[26]
2017 Winners
The competition did not begin as usual in May, 2017. Starting from the late summer, the official website stated that "We're conducting some experiments" and "Coming Fall 2017".[27] The submissions of competition in 2018 began on 13 September 2018.
2018 Winners
The Google Science Fair returned with 179 different prizes available for 2018–19.[28] It opened for entries on September 13, 2018, and closed its entries on December 12, 2018. State award winners were announced in March 2019, regional award winners in April 2019, and global finalists in May 2019. On July 29, 2019, the top five awards were issued for students and one for an inspiring educator. The Google Grand Prize, featuring an award of a $50,000 educational scholarship, went to Fionn Ferreira, of Ireland. His project was titled "An investigation into the removal of microplastics from water using ferrofluids."[29] The National Geographic Explorer award was won by A U Nachiketh Kumar and Aman K A, of India, for finding an eco-friendly way to coagulate rubber. The Lego Education Award was won by Daniel Kazantsev of the Russian Federation, who wanted to find a better way to help those who are hearing impaired to communicate with the world around them. The Scientific American Award was won by Tuan Dolmen of Turkey, who found a way to harness energy from tree vibrations. The Galactic Pioneer Award was won by Celestine Wenardy of Indonesia, for creating a low-cost and non-invasive glucose meter.[30]
The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, commonly called the Young Scientist Exhibition, is an Irish annual school students' science competition that has been held in the Royal Dublin Society, Dublin, Ireland, every January since the competition was founded by Tom Burke and Tony Scott in 1965.
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Ciara Judge is an Irish scientist from Kinsale, County Cork and a public speaker. She was a finalist of the 42nd BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2013 at the age of fifteen with two others: Emer Hickey, Sophie Healy-Thow. She also won a First place Award in the European Union Contest for Young Scientists 2013. In 2014, she jointly with her 2 friends won the grand prize in Google Science Fair Ciara was also listed as one of the 25 most influential teens in Time for the year 2014 as a result of her innovation.
Arsh Shah Dilbagi is an Indian scientist, inventor and roboticist. He completed his undergraduate at Princeton University studying Operations Research and Financial Engineering. He is the founder of Arido about which very little has been made public.
Krtin Nithiyanandam is a British medical researcher. He was awarded the Scientific American Innovator Award at the 2015 Google Science Fair for his work on developing a novel diagnosis test for early-onset Alzheimer's disease. The award came with $25,000. In 2017, Krtin's research on identifying a mechanism to make triple-negative breast cancer more treatable won the Intermediate Science stream at the national Big Bang Fair. Recently, Nithiyanandam was the recipient of the U.K. Junior Water Prize for his project titled "A novel, photocatalytic, lead-sequestering bioplastic for sustainable water purification and environmental remediation". He represented the U.K. at the international Stockholm Junior Water Prize.
Hayley Todesco is a Canadian student inventor who is best known for winning the Google Science Fair in 2014 for her use of sand filters to clean up oil sands waste.
Shree Bose is an American scientist, inventor, and speaker. She is known as the grand prize winner of the inaugural Google Science Fair in 2011. She is currently a member of the Physician Scientist Development Program (PSDP) program at the University of Chicago Medical Center, having graduated with an MD–PhD from Duke University School of Medicine in 2023. For high school, she went to Fort Worth Country Day School and graduated in May, 2012. She studied at Harvard College until May 2016. In 2014, she cofounded Piper, a STEM education company creating engineering kits for children.
Fionn Miguel Eckardt Ferreira is an Irish inventor, chemistry student and Forbes 30 under 30 listee. He is known for his invention of a method to remove microplastic particles from water using a natural ferrofluid mixture.
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