Congratulations to our 2016 Regional Finalists and European Community Impact Award Winner

Editor's note: For 2016, there are five Community Impact Awards: one for each top project that focuses on fixing a difficult problem across North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. We're also ramping up to announce the 16 Global Finalists that will be joining us for our Awards Celebration -- check out the Top 100 submitted by students around the world!

This year, the Google Science Fair invited students from around the world to use science and engineering to make something better. And they did not disappoint. From creating more eco-friendly fuel to making our water safe to drink, we were so impressed with the creative and thoughtful solutions to big world problems that students shared with us. Out of the thousands of projects from over 107 countries, we're excited to share the Top 100 ideas selected by the judges. You can see the full list of the 100 Google Science Fair Regional Finalists here.

These 100 Regional Finalists are all in the running to become one of the 16 Global Finalists, who will join us in Mountain View on September 27 for our sixth annual Awards Celebration.

In addition to our regional finalists, please join us in congratulating the Community Impact Award winners from Turkey, Ezgi and Ilyada. This science duo is using aluminum cans to make buildings stronger during earthquakes.

Read more about their incredible idea on the Google Science Fair website.

Thanks to the generous support of our partners — LEGO Education, Scientific American, National Geographic, and Virgin Galactic — Community Impact winners will receive mentoring and educational scholarships to help them make the world a better place through science, math, and engineering. They’ll also be joining our Global Finalists at Google headquarters for the Awards Celebration.

To find out who the 16 Global Finalists will be, check out the Google Science Fair site on Aug 11, and keep up with news about the fair on Google+ and Twitter.

Posted by: Andrea Cohan, product marketing manager Google Science Fair