The much awaited Google Science fair list of finalists has been announced on Google's official blog. It was no easy task to select 15 finalists out of the 60 semi-finalists of all the students' projects. Students asked interesting questions, many focused on real-world problems and some produced groundbreaking science that challenged current conventions, said Samantha Peter of the Education Team on Google's official blog.

The competition invites projects from young scientists across the world to build and submit projects relevant for the world today.

For the final round, the finalists will be going to the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, to present their projects to the panel of finalist judges, including science luminaries, technology innovators and one Nobel laureate.

The prizes for the winners include $100,000 in scholarship funds, real-life experiences at CERN, Google, LEGO and Scientific American, and a trip to the Galapagos Islands, courtesy of National Geographic Expeditions.

The announcement fo the prize winners will be made during the celebration gala on the same evening as of the final round which would begin at 6.00 p.m. on July 11. The event will be streamed live on Google's YouTube channel.

From the past two weeks, the voting lines are open in Google's online voting gallery for people from across the world to vote for their favorite project. A tough competition with over 1 lakh votes flowing in, Nimal Subramanian is the People's Choice Award winner. Google has also congratulated its winners on the blog. The list of the names of the finalists for the Science fair, which was open to students aged 13 to 18 from around the world is as follows:

Age 13 - 14
Anand Srinivasan, USA
Daniel Arnold, USA
Lauren Hodge, USA
Luke Taylor, South Africa
Michelle Guo, USA

Age 15 - 16
Dora Chen, USA
Gavin Ovsak, USA
Harine Ravichandran, India
Naomi Shah, USA
Skanda Koppula, USA

Age 17 - 18
Christopher Neilsen, Canada
Matthew Morris, USA
Shaun Lim Hsien Yang, Singapore
Shree Bose, USA
Vighnesh Leonardo Shiv, USA

India California South Africa South Africa