Doodle 4 Google Competition Winner Announced

Announcement
May 20, 2009

Christin Engelberth, a 6th grade student from Bernard A Harris Jr. High School in San Antonio, Texas has been named the national winner of the 2009 Doodle 4 Google competition. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, announced the winner during a special ceremony to honor the regional winners at the Smithsonian’s, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. Christin Engelberth’s doodle will appear on the Google homepage in the U.S. on Thursday, May 21st.

A "doodle" is a fun logo design that appears on the Google homepage periodically to celebrate special events, holidays, or the lives of artists and inventors. This is the second year that Google has hosted a contest for K-12 students from schools in the U.S. to design their own version of the Google logo, inspired by this year’s theme, "What I Wish for the World". Following today’s ceremony, the winning doodles will be part of a national exhibit at the Smithsonian’s, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum that will be open to the public from May 21st through July 5th.

Christin Engelberth’s doodle was chosen from over 28,000 doodles submitted by students across the country. Marissa Mayer and Dennis Hwang, Google’s original doodler, selected the national winner based artistic merit, creativity, expression of the theme and other criteria.

The winning doodle is titled "A New Beginning" and Christin Engelberth describes her doodle as a way to express her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more." In addition to having her doodle appear on Google’s homepage, Christin Engelberth will receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer, a t-shirt with her doodle and a $25,000 technology grant for her school.

The three national finalists (one from each grade group) were selected by public vote. Nearly 6 million public votes were cast online (www.google.com/doodle4google) from May 11th to May 18th. Also, this year Google awarded a District Quality Participation Prize in the amount of $10,000 to the school district that had the greatest quality participation from its schools.

The finalists, listed below, received a trip to New York City, a laptop computer, and a t-shirt printed with their doodle.

National Finalists

Grades K-3
Name: Miriam Elizabeth Lowery
School: Austin Peay Elementary
City, State: Covington, TN

Grades 7-9
Name: Blakely Linz
School: Indian Hill Middle School
City, State: Cincinnati, OH

Grades 10-12
Name: Emerald Lu
School: Covington Latin School
City, State: Covington, KY

The District Quality Participation Prize is awarded to Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada.

For more on information, go to Official Google Blog.

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