Last night was the grand finale of the inaugural Google Science Fair. Out of more than 7,500 entries from more than 10,000 young scientists, in more than 90 countries, 15 finalists had risen to the top.

How do you chose the winners among so many bright, young minds?

It was no easy task for the highly-esteemed panel of judges, which included Google leaders Vint Cerf and Peter Norvig, renowed geneticist and director of the Genographic Project from National Geographic and IBM Spencer Wells, and Nobel Prize winning Chemist Kary Mullis, just to name a few (see full panel of judges here).

So without further adieu, here are the top three winners by age category, as listed in the official Google blog:

• Lauren Hodge in the 13-14 age group. Lauren studied the effect of different marinades on the level of potentially harmful carcinogens in grilled chicken.
• Naomi Shah in the 15-16 age group. Naomi endeavored to prove that making changes to indoor environments that improve indoor air quality can reduce people’s reliance on asthma medications.
• Shree Bose in the 17-18 age group. Shree discovered a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients when they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.

Pretty amazing stuff. It’s also encouraging to see such potential in STEM subject areas with all of the (mostly negative) media attention centering around our education system these days.

To learn more about the contest, visit the official Google blog post.

To watch last night’s ceremonies and speeches, you can visit the Google YouTube channel here.