Audrey Zhang, NY Fifth Grader, Wins Google Doodle Contest With Water-Themed Design

A Long Island fifth grader beat about 100,000 other elementary school students to have Monday's "Google Doodle."

Audrey Zhang, an 11-year-old from Levittown, New York, is the winner of the Doodle 4 Google contest -- a national competition where her illustration garnered the most online votes for her age division. A panel of judges then selected her design as the overall winner. The "doodle" was in response to the idea, “If I Could Invent One Thing to Make the World a Better Place." Zhang’s illustration focuses on clean water initiatives.

"To make the world a better place, I invented a transformative water purifier. It takes in dirty and polluted water from rivers, lakes, and even oceans, then massively transforms the water into clean, safe and sanitary water, when humans and animals drink this water, they will live a healthier life," Zhang said describing her drawing.

Zhang was crowned the contest’s winner last month at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, where she and other contestants attended educational workshops and an awards ceremony. While there, Zhang brainstormed with Google animators to add movement to her drawing.

"There's so much in Audrey's wonderful doodle to animate, it took the doodle team the next couple of weeks to get it ready for its debut on Google's homepage," Doodle 4 Google program manager Liat Ben Rafael said.

Besides a coveted spot on Google’s homepage, Zhang was also awarded a $30,000 college scholarship. In honor of her drawing, Google is donating $20,000 in her name to provide clean water and latrines to schools in Bangladesh. Zhang’s school, Island Trees Middle School, will receive a $50,000 Google for Education technology grant.