First started in 2011, the Google Science Fair seeks to encourage young students around the world by offering them the opportunity to develop science projects and share their findings online. Today they announced this year's finalists, whose ideas are more than a little impressive. Remember: These kids are all in middle and high school. When I was in high school, my biggest accomplishment was being the drum major of the marching band. They're already so much cooler than I'm ever going to be.

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If you're a student between the ages of 13 and 18 with an interest in science, then grab your lab coat and get to work. Google is taking submissions for their third annual Google Science Fair as of today. They've partnered up with CERN, LEGO, National Geographic, and Scientific American to offer some truly amazing prizes that include scholarships, an expedition to the Galapagos, and a week shadowing a particle physicist at Fermilab.

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Looking back on high school, I'm often surprised that I graduated with even a modicum of science literacy -- let's just say that my projects usually seemed a bit rushed, which is to say they were entirely completed the night before the due date. But for the teens who competed in this year's Google Science Fair, an annual competition that invites teenagers from around the world to digitally submit their science projects, I think it's safe to say that science is a blessing and an opportunity, and not a curse. Among this year's amazing contestants, grand prize winner Brittany Wenger, a 17-year-old girl from Florida, seems to be stealing the show -- and with her amazing project, a neural network that can diagnose breast cancer with 99.11% accuracy, can you really blame her?

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In July, we brought you the story of Google's first annual science fair, and how the winner in each age bracket (13-14, 15-16, 17-18) turned out to be a young lady, namely Lauren Hodge, Naomi Shah, and Shree Bose. Lauren and Naomi were awarded $25,000 each in scholarship money and internships at Google and LEGO, while Shree received a $50k college scholarship, an internship at CERN and a trip to the Galapagos with National Geographic. But what was their research about? Well, the title of this post is a hint, but you can hear them say it in their own words, in their own TED Talk below:

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On July 11th, the top fifteen contestants of the first annual Google Science Fair all gathered at Google's headquarters to compete. In all three age categories, it was intelligent young women who took home the top prizes. Lauren Hodge (Age group 13-14), Naomi Shah (Age group 15-16), and Shree Bose (Age group 17-18) all took home trophies for their entries, and Bose's was for a breakthrough in the treatment of ovarian cancer.

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