PRESS RELEASE
YouTube Space Lab and Lenovo Announce Six Regional Winners in Science Competition:
Two Global Winners’ Experiments to be Conducted in Space
Winners hail from Egypt, India, New Zealand, Spain and U.S.
Toronto, Ontario – February 22, 2012 – YouTube, Lenovo and Space Adventures today announced the six regional winners (youtube.com/spacelab), the global science competition that challenged 14-18 year olds to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. 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), Space Lab will provide two global winners the chance to have their experiments conducted and live-streamed on YouTube from the International Space Station to the world using a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop.
The six regional winners, who hail from Egypt, India, New Zealand, Spain and the U.S., are:
14 – 16 year olds:
Patrick Zeng & Derek Chan, New Zealand (Asia Pacific region)
Laura Calvo & María Vilas, Spain (Europe, Middle East and Africa region)
Dorothy Chen & Sara Ma, U.S. (The Americas region)
17 – 18 year olds:
Sachin Kukke, India (Asia Pacific region)
Amr Mohamed, Egypt (Europe, Middle East and Africa region)
Emerald Bresnahan, U.S. (The Americas region)
The six regional winning teams will visit Washington, D.C. in March for a series of activities and events to honour their achievements including a ZERO-G Flight, a Lenovo IdeaPad U300s Ultrabook™, a special tour and dinner at the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum at Dulles and an awards ceremony at the Newseum on March 22. The two global winners (one team from each of the two age groups) will be announced at the awards ceremony on March 22, and will later this year have their experiments performed 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and live-streamed on YouTube as part of a global event celebrating science and space.
In addition, the two global winners will get to choose a unique space experience: 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 centre for Russian cosmonauts.
“This grand project demonstrates that math and science matter,” said Zahaan Bharmal, Google’s Head of Marketing Operations, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and the man behind the idea of Space Lab. “These six winners represent the next generation of scientists and even space explorers. Their families, schools, local communities and countries should be very proud.”
“Space Lab has uncovered a spirit of discovery for science among students around the world,” said Michael Schmedlen, worldwide director of education, Lenovo. “As the world’s #1 PC-maker in education and the only PC-maker with laptops certified for use on the International Space Station, we’re committed to programs like this that use technology to help engage and foster a passion for science in students.”
Popularity for Space Skyrockets Across the World
YouTube 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 served as a launch pad for discovering the best space and science videos on YouTube, has received more than 50 million combined video views worldwide throughout the course of the competition.
More than 150,000 YouTube users worldwide helped determine the six regional winners by voting for their favourite experiment. The YouTube community casted votes alongside our prestigious panel of judges including 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.
About YouTube
YouTube is the world’s largest online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch, and share original videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original-content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube, LLC, is based in San Bruno, California, and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US $21 billion personal technology company serving customers in more than 160 countries, and the world’s second-largest PC vendor. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations and a family of mobile Internet devices including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centres in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.
About Space Adventures
Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world’s first private space explorers, is headquartered in Vienna, Va., with an office in Moscow. It offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the moon, Zero-Gravity flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecraft. The company’s advisory board includes Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot, Charles Walker, and Skylab/Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott. For more information, please visit www.spaceadventures.com.