Google India has announced the winner of the Google Community Impact Award, a theme based award part of Google Science Fair 2016. Inviting over thousands of projects from over 107 countries,14 year old Advay Ramesh from Chennai, India bagged the prestigious award from Asia. The Community Impact Award honors a project that makes a practical difference in the innovator’s community by addressing an environmental, health or resources challenge.
Advay presented his project on creating ‘FishErmen Lifeline Terminal (FELT)’ to enhance the fishermen safety and productivity using Global Positioning Services (GPS) that won him $10,000 in funding and a year-long mentorship from Scientific American to further help develop his winning project. Advay who is currently studying in Class X in National Public School, Chennai has also been chosen among the Top 20 finalists shortlisted to compete for a Grand Prize worth $50,000 in scholarship.
“Young minds are inventive, thoughtful, and determined to try things that other people think are “impossible.” It’s imperative for us to support and encourage these young people to explore and challenge the world around them through scientific discovery. Through the Google Science Fair, we want to encourage and support the next generation of scientists and engineers” said a Google spokesperson.
Further sharing his excitement on being announced the winner, Advay said “Winning the Google Community Impact Award means a lot to me, it would help me learn more and develop my idea further”.
Out of the thousands of projects across the globe, Google selected Top 100 ideas by the judges, including 14 projects from students across India. Check out the full list of the 100 Google Science Fair Regional Finalists here. These 100 Regional Finalists are all in the running to become one of the 16 Global Finalists, who will join Google in Mountain View on September 27 for their sixth annual Awards Celebration.
