YouTube Space Lab Announces 60 Finalists in Competition to Send Students’ Experiments into Space

San Bruno, California (January 17, 2012) – YouTube, Lenovo, and Space Adventures in cooperation with space agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), today announced the sixty finalists of YouTube Space Lab (youtube.com/spacelab), the global science competition that challenges 14-18 year-olds to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. YouTube Space Lab received thousands of video submissions from more than 80 countries, a remarkable number given the uniquechallenge of designing an experiment that could actually be carried out in space – something that has traditionally been the mission of qualified astronauts and scientists. Entrants not only described their science experiment ideas via video, but demonstrated and animated the procedures they were submitting.

The U.S. led with 10 finalists, followed by India with nine. Rounding out the top five countries in terms of total submissions are Poland, Canada, and Spain. U.S. finalists hail from states including California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Vermont. A complete list of finalists is below.

Starting today through January 24, the YouTube community will be invited to judge these entries alongside a prestigious panel of judges, including renowned scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s Associate Administrator of Education and former Astronaut Leland Melvin, ESA Astronaut Frank De Winne, JAXA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Cirque du Soleil’s founder Guy Laliberté, to determine the winners. YouTube users and the judging panel will determine 6 regional winners (2 teams from each of the 3 regions) who will travel to Washington, DC, where the global winners (2 teams from each age group) will be announced in March.

“We’re thrilled with the response to YouTube Space Lab,” said Zahaan Bharmal, Google’s Head of Marketing Operations, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and the man behind the idea for Space Lab. “They rose to the challenge – demonstrating great imagination, creativity and passion with their ideas. Our mission was to inspire the next generation and the response shows, we’ve done just that. Today’s Space Lab entrants are tomorrow’s space explorers.”

High Interest Across the World

Space Lab invited budding scientists in two age categories, 14-16 years old and 17-18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, to submit a YouTube video describing their experiment to YouTube.com/SpaceLab. The Space Lab channel itself, which serves as a launch pad for discovering the best space and science videos on YouTube, has received more than 40 million combined video views worldwide.

The majority of entries, approximately forty percent, came from India, followed by the U.S. with fifteen percent. The remaining top ten countries in terms of submissions include the U.K., Russia, Israel, Canada, Spain, Italy, Poland and Japan. Seventy-eight percent of the entries came from the 14-16 year old teams with twenty-two percent from the 17–18 year old teams. Nearly half of the youth entered the competition on their own, while teams of two and three students comprised slightly more than 50 percent.

“Space Lab brings together the brightest young minds in the world today – and we’re impressed with all of the thought-provoking entries,” said Michael Schmedlen, worldwide director of education, Lenovo. “From a global education standpoint, we’re seeing a strong correlation between the entries received and the results from our Global Student Science and Technology Outlook survey, which reveals students in emerging countries – India, Mexico and Russia – have a greater interest in and prioritize science-related careers over students in other developed countries.”

Six regional winners will be announced in February and will gather in Washington, D.C., in March to experience a ZERO-G flight and receive a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop. From them, two global winners, one from each age group, will be announced and later have their experiments performed 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and live streamed on YouTube from a ThinkPad laptop as part of a global event celebrating science and space. Additionally, the global winners will get to choose a unique space experience as a prize: a trip to Japan to watch their experiment blast off in a rocket bound for the ISS, or once they are 18 years old, a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training center for Russian cosmonauts.

YouTube Space Lab Finalists

14 – 16 year olds

The Americas
Katie Gwozdecky – Canada
Michael De Lazzari, Erik Friedman, and Jenny Zhang – Canada

Valentina Mazzanti and Sebastian Escobar – Columbia

Mark Liang – USA (San Marino, California)
Natalie Ng – USA (Cupertino, California)
Luis Tapia and Ben Miller – USA (Castro Valley, California)
Pranav Singh – USA (Irvine, California)
Sara Ma and Dorothy Chen – USA (Troy, Michigan)
Cheyenne Hua, Erica Lin, and Karina Xie – USA (New York City, NY)

Europe, Middle-East and Africa

Tobias Antensteiner – Austria
Victoria Tarisai – Austria

Simon Kopf – Germany

Ariel Berko and Yoav Levi – Israel

Jaime Costa – Morocco

Maciej Giza – Poland
Micha? Styk, Maria Leniarska, and Jakub Jab?o?ski – Poland
MrMooblo 3 – Poland
Rafa? Weso?owski, Marcin Ruchniewicz, and Krzysztof Kallas – Poland

Laura Calvo and María Vilas – Spain
Luis Alvarez Ayuso and Marina Lopez Gonzalez – Spain

Reuben Thomas-Davis – UK
Harry Green and Jack Goodwill – UK

Asia-Pacific

Thomas Gambuti, Francesca Mcgrath, and Ruby Wright – Australia
Wyatt McCoach and Forrest Gerner – Australia

Abhishek Shastry and Animesh Shastry – India
Megha Sharma and Karan Sapolia Sharma – India
Nitya Raju – India

Patrick Zeng and Derek Chan – New Zealand

Ping-Chun Lin & Wei-Ting Hsiao – Taiwan