Editor's note: We're celebrating this year's impressive 20 Google Science Fair finalist projects over 20 days in our Spotlight on a Young Scientist series. Learn more about each of these inspiring young people and hear what inspires them in their own words.

Name: Olivia Hallisey

Home: Connecticut, USA

Age Category: 16-18

Project title: Temperature-independent, inexpensive and rapid detection of Ebola

Olivia was shocked to learn about the Ebola epidemic spreading through Africa. She wondered how to get treatment delivered faster to the people that needed it and recalled her science lesson about silk storage. With it’s stabilizing properties, could silk allow Ebola antibodies to travel much longer without the need for refrigeration? After a few attempts, Olivia created the Ebola Assay card – her new antibody storage system that can be designed in 30 minutes anywhere in the world and can transport vaccines/antibodies for Ebola, HIV and other diseases for up to one week.


What was the inspiration behind your project? 

My decision to focus my project on the development of a novel temperature-independent, rapid, portable and inexpensive diagnostic test for the detection of the Ebola virus, was prompted by the devastating loss of life in Africa during the most recent 2014 Ebola outbreak. The consequences will be far-reaching with valuable applicability as an ELISA-based diagnostic for other diseases, including HIV, lyme disease, yellow fever, dengue fever and certain cancers. The concentration of fatalities in Ebola stricken areas has left many children orphaned, and the socioeconomic fabric of entire villages destroyed. School closures have impacted over five million children, risking permanent educational dislocation and high risk behaviors such as child labor. Early diagnosis and proper medical care are critical to containing and eliminating the spread of Ebola and any other contagious illnesses.

When and why did you become interested in science? 

I became interested in science as a young child because of my late grandfather, a doctor and medical researcher. He showed me the power of science and research to make new discoveries that could lead to breakthroughs that could give back hope and transform futures. He was passionate about science and medicine and cared deeply that his work would contribute towards a greater understanding and a cure for diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis and Alzheimers. I hope to be a doctor like my grandfather, and one day work for a global health organization, such as Doctors Without Borders.

What words of advice would you share with other young scientists? 

Think globally. Reconsider existing solutions and always ask “Why not?” Don’t think that everything that can be done has been done. There’s always room for innovation and creative reconsideration. Everyone has a role in change.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google for Education Team

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

The tradition of ringing in each New Year with resolutions (whether we stick to them or not) is always an opportunity to reflect and start the year ahead on the right foot. As students and teachers around the world return to campuses and classrooms this fall, we’re embarking on a different kind of fresh start: a New (School) Year. And we want to help you make the most of it. So we’ve put together a few resolution ideas, plus tips to help you stick to them. We’ve also made a resolution of our own: to bring the best of Google technology to education.

The best of Google, for education
Like many resolutions, ours might sound familiar—and that’s because the Google for Education team has been working on it for a while. Over the last few years, we’ve spent a lot of time with teachers and students, witnessing firsthand how technology is helping in the classroom and learning about challenges that are yet unsolved. With feedback from schools, we’ve improved products like Google Apps for Education and Docs, building in new features specifically useful for education. We’ve also created new learning experiences like Google Classroom—a sort of mission control for teachers and students, offering a single place to keep track of all class materials, eliminating paperwork and making it easy for teachers to collaborate with students, and students to collaborate with each other. 

So as part of our resolution this school year, we’re launching some new features in Google Classroom. Teachers can now easily ask students questions in Classroom, alongside all the other class materials in the stream. Teachers also told us that they want more ways for students to engage with each other, and flex their critical thinking muscles. So now students can comment on each other’s answers in Classroom and have open-ended discussions. In the next month, we'll also make it possible for teachers to add assignments, due dates and field trips to a shared calendar.

So what’s your resolution?
We’re sure you’ve already set some big goals for the year ahead—from acing AP Bio to landing that killer internship. Whatever your plans, it can be tough to stick with those goals once assignments and social commitments start to pile up. So we’ve collected 50+ tips from more than 15 Google products to help you follow through with your resolutions. Here are some ideas:

Resolution 1. Get (and stay) organized
When you’re bogged down by clutter, it can be tough to get stuff done. Make this your year to be more organized. Never miss another study group with help from Google Calendar. Use Google Sheets to keep all your classmates' info in one place, and better manage your inbox by emailing everyone at once with a Google group.

Resolution 2. Get (mentally) fit
Push yourself to take your studies to the next level. Teach yourself how to code with Made with Code. Make the most of language class by saving your most used words and phrases with Google Translate or magically translating webpages with Google Chrome.

Resolution 3. Get some worldly perspective
Not studying abroad this year? No problem. You can still unleash your inner explorer with Google Maps Treks and visit the Pyramids of Giza or the Great Barrier Reef without leaving your room. Or bring your art history class to life by seeing those masterpieces up close and in perfect detail with Cultural Institute.

We hope these give you new ideas for how you can make this school year your best yet. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be announcing more tips and other updates—so follow along with #GoogleEdu and on Google+. We’ll be doing our homework to stick to our resolution, so we can hopefully give you what you need to do the same. Now go hit those books! 

Editor's note: We're celebrating this year's impressive 20 Google Science Fair finalist projects over 20 days in our Spotlight on a Young Scientist series. Learn more about each of these inspiring young people and hear what inspires them in their own words.

Name: Deepika Kurup

Home: New Hampshire, USA

Age Category: 16-18

Project title: Solar powered silver combating bacteria in drinking water




During her family summer visits to India, Deepika was troubled to see small children drinking polluted water from streams. She wondered how developing countries could best clean their water, and once returning to the U.S. tested different chemicals. She found that a solution mixed with silver and powered by the sun removed bacteria faster than current methods. With this finding, she hopes to provide cleaner drinking water to families in India and around the world. 

What was the inspiration behind your project? 

Every summer my family and I travel across the world to visit India. In America, I always had the privilege of having unlimited access to potable water; however, in India I saw children drink water that I felt was too dirty to touch. I wanted to find out why these people lacked access to safe water, a substance that’s essential for life. I learned that we’re facing a global water crisis. According to the World Health Organization, one-ninth of the global population lacks access to clean water. This unacceptable social injustice compelled me to find a solution to the world’s clean water problem.

When and why did you become interested in science? 

I’ve always been curious about the world around me. When I was younger, I’d constantly ask my parents questions about how the world works, and their explanations were often rooted in scientific concepts. As I grew, I began to notice that science is truly everywhere. After hearing about scientific discoveries on the news and reading stories of famous scientists in the past, I realized that science has the power to lead us to revolutionary new discoveries that can change the world. This passion for science, combined with my interest in solving global challenges, is what sparked my interest in research.

What words of advice would you share with other young scientists? 

I would strongly encourage other young scientists to continue to pursue their passions in science, technology, engineering and math. While scientific advancements are being made every day, our world still faces several grand challenges. We need young scientists to solve these grand challenges, as science has the power to help people find solutions to problems we never thought could be solved.

Posted by Will Phan, Google Classroom Software Engineer

As you gear up for the new school year, try the newest features in Google Classroom for more ways to save time, engage your students and keep everyone organized. Most of these features are rolling out this week; stay tuned in the next few weeks for more back-to-school goodies in Google Classroom, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, all designed to help you make this school year yours.

Keep students engaged with question-driven discussions 

Since Classroom launched last year, teachers have been using their class stream to host student debates, Q&A and discussions. Starting today, you’ll be able to do this in a more collaborative way. You can post questions to your class and allow students to have discussions by responding to each other’s answers (or not, depending on the setting you choose). For example, you could post a video and ask students to answer a question about it, or post an article and ask them to write a paragraph in response.

“Often, teachers want to do a quick check-in on what their students are learning. Now with this built in to Google Classroom, teachers can easily do this on the fly, any time,” said Michael Fricano II, who teaches at Iolani School in Honolulu. “Your class can have a really engaging, focused conversation.”

Reuse posts 

You know those lessons that worked so well last year that you want to use them again? Now you can reuse assignments, announcements or questions from any one of your classes — or any class you co-teach, whether it’s from last year or last week. Once you choose what you’d like to copy, you’ll also be able to make changes before you post or assign it.

“The reuse post feature gives teachers the gift of time. Making changes to something already created is way easier than starting from scratch,” said Heather Breedlove, Technology Integration Coordinator at Flagstaff Unified School District in Arizona. “It’s working smarter, not harder.”

Calendar Integration 

In the next month, Classroom will automatically create a calendar for each of your classes in Google Calendar. All assignments with a due date will be automatically added to your class calendar and kept up to date. You’ll be able to view your calendar from within Classroom or on Google Calendar, where you can manually add class events like field trips or guest speakers.

And a few more improvements you’ve asked for:

• Bump a post: When you want to make sure an older item is easy for students to find, you can now move any post to the top of the stream. 
• Due dates optional: For long-term projects or student-driven assignments, you’ll now have the option to create assignments that don’t have due dates. 
• Attach a Google Form to a post: Many teachers have been using Google Forms as an easy way to assign a test, quiz or survey to the class. Coming in the next few weeks, teachers and students will soon be able to attach Google Forms from Drive to posts and assignments, and get a link in Classroom to easily view the answers. 

In case you missed it 

We know YouTube is an important source of educational content for many schools. Because it also contains content that an organization or school might not consider acceptable, last month we launched advanced YouTube settings for all Google Apps domains as an Additional Service. These settings give Apps admins the ability to restrict the YouTube videos viewable for signed-in users, as well as signed-out users on networks managed by the admin. Learn more here.

All of us on the Classroom team have been deeply touched by the teachers in our lives, who inspire us in the work that we do. For me, that’s my brother Tuan, an English teacher at the Chinese International School in Hong Kong. We make these products for you. And we hope these new features will help you kick off another incredible year of teaching and learning.

Editor's note: We're celebrating this year's impressive 20 Google Science Fair finalist projects over 20 days in our Spotlight on a Young Scientist series. Learn more about each of these inspiring young people and hear what inspires them in their own words.

Name: Zhilin Wang

Home: Singapore

Age Category: 16-18

Project title: Zinc air batteries for affordable, renewable energy storage 


Zhilin has used his large capacity for wonder to question everything since he was a young boy. This strong curiosity for not just what goes on around him but what happens in other countries led him to understand how developing countries access renewable energy. To speed up the slow chemical reaction produced by oxidizing zinc with oxygen from the air, Zhilin built an aerogel consisting of carbon nanotubes and graphene. His gel sped up the oxidation process, allowing faster storage of renewable energy. He looks forward to testing his aerogel in villages that don’t have electricity – rather than the multiple sources we rely on today. This system, with a little more development, could have expansive use in areas ranging from wearable computing to location-based applications, where an instant and accurate indoor 3D positioning system is in high demand.

What was the inspiration behind your project? 

Looking at the world around me, I can’t help but marvel at how far our search for novel materials has come to improve our everyday living. Nowadays, such materials are literally everywhere: in our smartphones, our clothes and even, for some of us, our bodies. Once in a while, when I find out about a novel material, I get really excited and dream about how it might shape our future.

Graphene aerogel is one such material. Think about this: you have a solution of graphene and a solvent, say water. If you can remove the solvent to leave behind only the graphene framework (or more illustratively, a graphene skeleton), you have yourself a graphene aerogel with some curious characteristics. It is super conductive, ultralight – reaching below the density of atmospheric air in some samples – and has a contact surface area matched by few. This means that it can potentially make astounding improvements in many of the things we use on a daily basis. I was eager to see if it can be applied to something that it had never been tested on before. So when a need for improving the efficiency of batteries came my way, I thought, “why not use graphene aerogel?”

With a stroke of luck, the graphene aerogel turned out to be suitable for the battery. Yet, I didn’t want to end my project there; I wanted to see if the improved battery could directly impact the lives of people. Having reflected upon some of the things I was grateful for, I realized that one of the most wonderful gifts I have received is a quality education. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to read my favorite books, learn so much about the world or even participate in this competition. Yet, many in underdeveloped regions do not receive basic education. Despite the promotion of global education, a great deal of children are forced out of school to support their families by working on farms or in factories. The only time they could spare for education is in the evenings but even then, the scarcity of reliable lighting means they’re unable to learn in the dark, as much as they want to. Can my battery be used to light up their nights? I didn’t know for sure, so I tried to find out.

When and why did you become interested in science? 

My love for science started around the time I was in primary school, when I found myself so curious about everything around me. You can say that every opportunity for me to discover something new was as irresistible as a candy laid before me. Of the many things I wanted to know, scientific demonstrations particularly piqued my interest. They seemed almost magical – water instantly freezing on a hard knock, violent fountains formed from Coca Cola and mints. But I wasn’t satisfied with merely marveling at them. I wanted to appreciate their inner beauty and understand how they actually worked. For me, science is about having a passion for the beauty of the world around us and understanding how and why things happen in it. Isn’t that much more interesting than simply accepting things as they are?

What words of advice would you share with other young scientists? 

Never be afraid to ask questions concerning things you are curious about, for what lies ahead is either a path of discovery or at least the joy of learning something new.

Posted by Hai Hong, K-12 Education Program Manager

Editor's note: Ensuring the appropriateness, value, and impact of our efforts in the computer science education space first requires an understanding of the issues which broadly impact the discipline, its practitioners and its students. This article is part of our ongoing effort to explore those issues and share our learnings along the way, which you can find at g.co/csedu.

If you're a student in a U.S. middle or high school, it’s likely that you do not have access to a computer science (CS) class where you learn how to program. If you’re Hispanic, Black, or from a lower-income household, your chances of having access to computers or CS learning opportunities are even slimmer. Today, in collaboration with Gallup, we're releasing Searching for Computer Science: Access and Barriers in U.S. K-12 Education, our landscape study of CS access and barriers in K-12 education.

We've known anecdotally that CS educational opportunities are lacking in our schools, but no recent study has provided a comprehensive look at what's happening on the ground with input from critical stakeholders including students, parents, and educators. More data and rigorous research on CS in schools was -- and still is -- needed to properly address these educational disparities.

Building on ideas from our 2014 study Women Who Choose Computer Science, we partnered with Gallup to conduct this comprehensive study of the state of CS education in the U.S. to both inform our K-12 education outreach efforts and enable equitable access to CS opportunities. Gallup surveyed nearly 16,000 respondents nationally, including 1,673 students, 1,685 parents, 1,013 teachers, 9,693 principals, and 1,865 superintendents. We asked these stakeholders about opportunities, limitations, awareness, and perceptions of CS education.

The full report Searching for Computer Science: Access and Barriers in U.S. K-12 Education contains key findings that we hope will inform the ongoing work in the field and inspire others to take action. Here are a few highlights:

Technology & Learning: Many students lack access to CS education, and racial disparities in exposure to the subject matter exist.

• 3 in 4 principals say their schools offer no CS programming/coding classes 
• Of the schools that do offer CS classes, the curriculum is often lacking and only 21% offer Advanced Placement level CS 
• Hispanic students are less likely than other groups to have access to computers with Internet at home and are less likely to use computers everyday at school; Black and low-income students are less likely than other groups to have access to CS at school; Girls are less likely than boys to have learned CS

Value of CS Education: Most students, parents, and educators highly value CS education.

• Nine-in-ten parents see CS education as a good use of school resources, and two-thirds of parents think computer science should be required learning in schools, with parents in lower-income households even more likely to hold this view 
• Over 80% of students think they will learn CS in the future

School Limitations: Parents want CS offered in schools, but administrators don’t perceive a high demand.

• CS is not a high priority in most schools and districts, and a number of barriers make it difficult for schools to offer CS
• 91% of parents want their child to learn CS, but less than 8% of administrators believe parent demand is high 
• Less than 30% of educators say CS is a top priority in their school or district Administrators tell us that the need to devote time to courses related to testing and a lack of trained teachers are the top barriers to offering CS in their schools

There’s a critical need to address the lack of awareness about student and parent demand for computer science, lack of support for CS teachers, and competing priorities that prevent computer science education from being offered. Also, despite the value of and interest in CS among all populations surveyed, we still see a need to broaden access to CS and computer technology for all students, especially for Black, Hispanic, and low-income students -- for example by exploring a variety of paths to learn CS, providing teachers with resources to learn about and teach CS, and asking school administrators and school boards to prioritize and support CS in schools. You can find a longer list of Google’s recommendations on how to expand opportunities to learn CS here keep track of Google's CS research at g.co/cseduresearch.

Today’s report is the first of a series of studies with Gallup. Our next installment will explore perceptions about CS, including stereotypes and unconscious biases that might limit some students from pursuing CS. Given the critical nature of computer science education in training the next generation of technologists, this research also provides a call to action for parents, teachers and school districts as they think through integrating this into their curriculum.

Editor's note: We're celebrating this year's impressive 20 Google Science Fair finalist projects over 20 days in our Spotlight on a Young Scientist series. Learn more about each of these inspiring young people and hear what inspires them in their own words.

Name: Wei-Tung, Chen (韋同 陳)

Home: Taipei City, Taiwan

Age Category: 16-18

Project title: Calculating the 3D position of an object from a single source




Weitung’s regular attendance at summer science camps has helped foster his love for inventing. He also recently found an interest in physics and calculating the position of objects using new methods. His project aims to accurately calculate the 3D position of an object using only one source – rather than the multiple sources we rely on today. This system, with a little more development, could have expansive use in areas ranging from wearable computing to location-based applications, where an instant and accurate indoor 3D positioning system is in high demand.

What was the inspiration behind your project? 

At first, I was interested in quad copters, and I did brief research on them. At that time, I saw a TED lecture about quad copters astonishing athletes. The lecturer said that the quad copters require a precise indoor positioning system to provide the positioning of the quads and navigate them. This inspired me to explore an indoor positioning system. I studied this topic in depth and began building up a magnetic positioning system. I met with my teacher numerous times and finally found a solution to achieve a precise indoor positioning system using only a source for referencing.

When and why did you become interested in science? 

When I was in grade 7, I entered the advanced math and science class, but that's not the reason why I became interested in science. After joining this class, I had a lot of opportunities to attend lectures and activities about science. The most inspirational lecture was the "Creativity, Innovation, and Design" class. This class was held every Sunday during the whole semester. I not only learned how to be innovative and creative and help solve problems in everyday life, but also to acknowledge the importance of teamwork, from coming up with ideas through brainstorming together to executing on the idea and building something together. I learned so much about design and invention during this time and became more enthusiastic about science and creating things using scientific knowledge. 

What words of advice would you share with other young scientists? 

Use your scientific abilities to help make the world better. No matter how small that the problem is, try to find a way to solve it. Be creative. You may find treasures throughout the process of finding solutions.