Self-Rescuing Princess of the Week - Brittany Wenger

I know it's only Tuesday, but I'm pretty sure it's safe to call it already! Google has announced the winners of the 2012 Google Science Fair. And, again, the Grand Prize winner is an innovative and enterprising young woman!

Winners of the 2012 Google Science Fair. Photo: Google

Brittany Wenger, from the US, won the prize for the 17-18 age category, as well as the Grand Prize, for her work, "Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer."

Brittany's project harnesses the power of the cloud to help doctors accurately diagnose breast cancer. Brittany built an application that compares individual test results to an extensive dataset stored in the cloud, allowing doctors to assess tumors using a minimally-invasive procedure.

Basically, a doctor enters the information about the mass into the database, and her algorithm can predict whether it is cancer with a 99.1% accuracy, reducing the number of malignant false negatives.

Brittany Wenger at her data input site. Photo: The Out-of-Door Academy

The other winners are quite impressive as well!

Jonah Kohn, also from the US, won the prize for the 13-14 age category for his work, "Good Vibrations: Improving the Music Experience for People with Hearing Loss Using Multi-Frequency Tactile Sound."

By creating a device that converts sound into tactile vibrations, Jonah's project attempts to provide the hearing impaired with an improved experience of music.

And Iván Hervías Rodrígues, Marcos Ochoa, and Sergio Pascual, of Spain, won the 15-16 age category for their work, "La Vida Oculta del Agua (The Secret Life of Water).

Iván, Marcos, and Sergio studied hidden microscopic life in fresh water, documenting the organisms that exist in a drop of water, and how those organisms influence our environment.

Well done, all!