Google certainly goes out of its way for charitable pursuits. One recent endeavor that recently finished was the Google Science Fair, which awarded over $100,000 in scholarships to teenagers and led to an astonishing battery of scientific findings.

The contestants, all age 13 to 18, presented a diverse array of projects. The top three, however, were all health related. Here are the winning projects:

• Lauren Hodge’s project noted that little research had been done on preventing carcinogens in cooked foods, and specifically grilled chicken. She researched several ingredients commonly used in marinades and found that some increased the carcinogens, some had variable impact, and some notably decreased the number of carcinogens.
• Naomi Shah’s project noted that, while there was a strong understanding that asthma was connected to pollutants, no model had been created to determine which specific pollutants caused the issue. Naomi successfully modeled four pollutants, demonstrating that two specific pollutants had a visible impact on asthma. Her model could be used by medical professionals to treat asthma, by individuals with asthma to increase the air quality in their environment in a targeted way, and in clean air laws in the U.S. and elsewhere.
• Shree Bose’s project took on the issue of ovarian cancer, and the major problem of cancer cells developing resistance to treatment. Through targeted studies, Shree found that the protein strand AMPK played a role in cancer cells developing this resistance. These findings could be used by the medical research industry to develop new approaches to treating ovarian cancer that could overcome the resistance developed by cancer cells.

Lauren (winner of the 13 to 14 age group) and Naomi (winner of the 15 to 16 age group) won $25,000 scholarships and Google internships. Shree, winner of the 17 to 18 age group, won a $50,000 scholarship and a CERN internship.