Seventeen-year-old Eric Chen took home the grand prize at the Google Science Fair. Chen, who will receive a $50,000 scholarship and other goodies, studied novel influenza endonuclease inhibitors for his project, identifying possible leads for new anti-flu therapies, according to his project description.
"I felt like this was a really urgent problem and I thought, well, why can't I use this new computational power at our fingertips in order to speed up this process and find new anti-flu medicine," Chen tells NBC News.
Other winners include 15-year-old Ann Makosinski, who developed a battery-free flashlight; Viney Kumar, 14, who created a signaling system for emergency vehicles; and 16-year-old Elif Bilgin, who manufactured a bioplastic using banana peels.