Google said this year's competition was more diverse than last year's with thousands of students from over 100 countries submitting entries. — Courtesy photoJEDDAH — Three entries from the Kingdom have been shortlisted for the Google Science Fair 2012. The Internet search engine giant announced the top 90 regional finalists of the 2nd Google Science Fair on Tuesday. Students Mohammed Al Eydan, Shahd Al-Jasser, and Menna Abdel-Gawad, were all shortlisted in the 15-16 year old category for their projects. Moreover, AbdelGawad's project, which seeks to find an efficient way to purify sea water, was also nominated for the Scientific American Science in Action award. The winner of the award will be announced on June 6 along with the 15 finalists of Google's Science Fair. These top 15 and the Science in Action winner will be flown out to Google's headquarters in California in July for a celebratory event and for the final round of judging, which will be conducted by a panel of renowned scientists and innovators. “The Google Science Fair is part of Google's broader commitment to increase access to education and encourage technology use in classrooms in the Middle East and around the world,” said Abdulrahman Tarabzouni, head of Emerging Arabia at Google. “I'm delighted but not surprised that three students from Saudi Arabia made it to the global finalists. There is an immense amount of talent and creativity that lies in the Kingdom and Google is serious about the untapped potential that exists here. Fostering and growing these skills will most certainly lead to more innovation, which can positively influence the Kingdom's ongoing social and economic development,” he added. Google said this year's competition was more diverse than last year's with thousands of students from over 100 countries submitting entries. Judges said they were impressed by the quality of the projects and that it was no easy task to evaluate the creativity, scientific merit and global relevance of each submission to narrow down the entries to just 90 finalists.
