11-Year-Old's Drawing Comes to Life as Google Doodle Winner

Audrey Zhang of Levittown, New York, was crowned the winner of this year's Doodle 4 Google contest.
Image: Google

One fifth grader just earned pretty impressive bragging rights: Her artwork has graced Google's homepage.

Out of more than 100,000 submissions, 11-year old Audrey Zhang won the 7th annual Doodle 4 Google competition with a drawing of a water purification system titled "Back to Mother Nature." Kids (K-12) were asked to draw inventions that would make the world a better place, and Zhang's rose to the top.

Zhang's Doodle was featured on Google's homepage on Monday in the United States. It was turned into a moving animation by some of the company's more seasoned Doodlers.

Google Doodle contest winner

Image: Screenshot, Google

Zhang, who is from Levittown, New York, not only won bragging rights, but also a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 Google for Education technology grant for her school. also donated $20,000 in Zhang's name to charity:water toward providing clean water to schools in Bangladesh.

"To make the world a better place, I invented a transformative water purifier," Zhang says in the video below. "It takes in dirty and polluted water from rivers, lakes and even oceans, then massively transforms the water into clean, safe and sanitary water, when humans and animals drink this water, they will live a healthier life."

Zhang learned she was a national finalist in April, when she was flown out to the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California — and a group of judges also chose her as the overall winner. The judges included a collection of Google staffers and guest panelists, from astronaut Ron Garan to directors and authors.

Even though Zhang's artwork went up at midnight, she didn't see it until this morning. She told Newsday that she was "excited" to see her artwork brought to life, but she wouldn't be awake when it debuted on Google's homepage: "I have school tomorrow, so I can't stay up late," she said.

While this is the first Doodle 4 Google winning artwork to be animated, plenty of other daily Doodles have been, like this Doctor Who one.

Last year, Doodle 4 Google received 130,000 submissions, up from 116,000 in 2012.


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