Winners of 2013 Google Science Fair Announced

The winners of the 2013 Google Science Fair were announced Monday with individuals from three separate age groups receiving the grand prize for their innovative and potentially life-saving projects.

Viney Kumar, 14, of Australia, came in first for the 13-14 age group for his work on a signalling method designed to alert traffic of an oncoming emergency vehicle.

"The PART program provides a near fool-proof method of reaching a timely alert to a target vehicle enabling corrective action and improving the success rate of the [emergency response vehicle] in its mission," Kumar explained in his project profile.

Taking first for the 15-16 age group was Ann Makosinski, 15, of Canada. Through the use of four Peltier tiles and the difference in temperature between the palm and surrounding air, Makosinski developed a flashlight capable of producing bright light from the heat generated by a person's hand.

Finally, coming in first for the 17-18 age group was Eric Chen, 17, of the United States, for his work in examining influenza endonuclease inhibitors as a jumping off point to a new type of anti-flu medication capable of fighting off any strain of the virus.

According to Chen, by combining computer modeling and biological studies, he was able to "identify a number of new, potent and structurally diverse endonuclease inhibitors with great potential to be developed into new anti-influenza drugs."

A patent on the discovery has already been filed.

The winners were selected from a list of top 15 projects chosen from thousands of entries from 120 countries around the world, beating out, for example, a multi-step system designed to aid in early diagnosis of melanoma and the development of a metallic exoskeleton glove to assist individuals with upper hand disabilities.

Meanwhile, a Scientific American Science in Action Award was assigned to Elif Bilgin, 16, for her project creating plastic from banana peel. The Turkey native was also the recipient of the Voter's Choice award.