Awesome Science Fair Projects By Teenagers

Brittany Wenger was the Grand Prize winner at the 2012 Google Science Fair, and is, well, kind of an All-Star. She started programming computers in seventh grade.


Then, after seeing her cousin struggle with breast cancer, she decided to put her talents toward developing a cloud-based program that helps doctors diagnose the deadly disease. (Check out the final project here.)


Not all lumps in the breast spread throughout the body, but accurately diagnosing the ones could early on is crucial to surviving the disease.


The easiest and least painful test for breast cancer, fine-needle aspiration, is also horribly unreliable. Improving its accuracy would give doctors a cheap, quick and relatively painless tool for detecting cancers early. It would be like sharpening a butter knife into a surgical scalpel.


She spent an entire year learning about breast cancer, and another year teaching herself Java to code the application. Her first two prototypes were failures. Then, it worked.


The program is 99.1% accurate, about 5% better than the leading commercial product, according to Wenger. Once someone inputs the necessary information, every important decision is made by the software. The computer also “learns” and grows more accurate as it examines more data.


Wenger has received some datasets from research institutions, and hopes that the program will soon be used by hospitals and clinics in actual diagnosis. She plans to major in computer science and biology in college.

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