Talented 17-year-old girl takes home top prize at Google Science Fair after creating breast cancer diagnosis app that is 'hospital-ready'



A 17-year-old girl has won the Google Science Fair grand prize after creating an iPhone app that helps doctors diagnose breast cancer.

Brittany Wenger, from Florida, combined the fields of biology and computer science to a develop a computer program called a 'neural network,' which mimics the human brain.

Detecting complex patterns to make diagnostic calls on breast cancer, her program correctly identifies 99per cent of malignant tumors, which won her a $50,000 college scholarship from Google.

Google grand winner: Brittany Wenger developed a computer program called a 'neural network,' which correctly identifies 99per cent of malignant tumors

Miss Wenger told WWSB: 'I think it might be hospital ready. I'd love to get different data from doctors. Right now, I have 700 test samples.'

Chosen from among 30 international finalists, five teenage winners of the second annual Google Science Fair were announced on Monday.

They were treated, as well as the runners-up, to a gala held in an airplane hanger near the company's Palo Alto headquarters in California.



Prizes include a college scholarships from Google for $25,000 or $50,000, trips to scientific hotspots like CERN and Fermilab, and trophies made out of Lego bricks.

Hospital-ready: The 17-year-old combined the fields of biology and computer science, developing a computer program which diagnoses breast cancer tumors

Winning app: Detecting complex patterns to make diagnostic calls on breast cancer, her program won her the grand prize and a $50,000 college scholarship

An eight grader from San Diegan, won the 13- to 14-year-old category, after he showed that the experience of music could be improved for the hard-of-hearing through tactile sound.

Jonah Kohn said in a YouTube video: 'Last year, when I wanted to play guitar with one of my friends, I realized it was much too loud in the classroom to hear the guitar.

'But if you put your teeth on the top of the guitar, then you can hear it no matter how loud it is around you.'

Filtering songs down to different frequency ranges and applying those vibrations to different parts of the body, like fingertips, Mr Kohn proved that the listening experience of people with cochlear implants could be improved by 95per cent, based on tests from 12 individuals with hearing loss.



Jonah kohn: The eight grader from San Diegan won the 13- to 14-year-old category, after he showed that the experience of music could be improved for the hard-of-hearing through tactile sound

Mighty trio: Ivan Hervias Rodriguez, Marcos Ochoa and Sergio Pascual won the 15-16-year-old category, documenting nasty germs living in Spain's fresh water

He told KPBS: 'I thought it was a very inspiring idea. I thought it could help a massive amount of people.'

The winning project in the 15- to 16-year-old category, went to a trio of young scientists form Logroño, Spain, who documented the microbes and nasty germs living in the fresh water in the country's north east.



According to their project description, Ivan Hervias Rodriguez, Marcos Ochoa and Sergio Pascual collected hundreds of samples over more than three years, documenting the presence of microbes found in over 60 fresh water sites, and establishing fresh water quality for the entire valley of the Ebro River .

