Canada among top five countries with the highest number of finalists in global YouTube Space Lab competition

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

Thousands of entries from more than 80 countries: Canada among top five
countries with the highest number of finalists

Toronto, Ontario - January 17, 2012 - YouTube, Lenovo and Space
Adventures, in cooperation with world 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 60 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 unique challenge of designing an experiment
that could realistically 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. A complete list of finalists is below.

Starting today through January 24, the YouTube community will be
invited to vote on these entries alongside a prestigious panel of judges
to determine the winners. Judges include Canadian Space Agency astronaut
Chris Hadfield, Cirque du Soleil’s founder Guy Laliberté, 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, and JAXA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.
YouTube users and the judging panel will determine six regional winners
(two teams from each of the three regions) who will travel to
Washington, D.C., where the global winners (two 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, which serves as a launch
pad for discovering the best space and science videos on YouTube, has
received more than 40 million views worldwide.

The majority of entries, approximately 40 per cent, came from India,
followed by the U.S. with 15 per cent. The remaining top 10 countries in
terms of submissions include the U.K., Russia, Israel, Canada, Spain,
Italy, Poland and Japan. Seventy-eight (78) per cent of the entries came
from the 14-16 year old teams and the remaining 22 per cent from the
17-18 year old category.  Nearly half of the youth entered the
competition on their own, while teams of two and three students
comprised slightly more than 50 per cent.

“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 revealed that
students in emerging countries - India, Mexico and Russia - have a
greater interest in and prioritize science-related careers more than
their counterparts in 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. Among them, two global winners, one from each age
group, will be announced. They will 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 centre for Russian
cosmonauts.

YouTube Space Lab Finalists

14 to 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
Michał Styk, Maria Leniarska, and Jakub Jabłoński - Poland
MrMooblo 3 - Poland
Rafał Wesołowski, 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

17 to 18-year olds

The Americas

Habeeb Ahmed and Annas Khan - Canada
Jesse Bettencourt, Alex Kasper, and Mackenzie Richardson - Canada

José Arce Gamboa and Brandon Solórzano - Costa Rica

Claudio Nahmad - Mexico
Mariana Infante - Mexico

Brian Barr, Shawn Albert, and Aditya Ragunathan - USA
(Dacula/Snellville/Duluth, GA)
Emerald Bresnahan - USA (Plainville, Massachusetts)
Emily O'Brien, Jillian Stoneburg, and Art Sherman - USA
(Barberton/Copley/Akron, Ohio)
Grady Ward, Colin Watts, and Charlie Wu - USA (Essex Junction,
Vermont)

Europe, Middle-East and Africa

Amr Mohamed - Egypt

François Tirvaudey - France

Michael Judt - Germany (lives in UK)

Adam Debreceni - Hungary
Peter Egri and Gábor Galgóczi - Hungary

Bartosz Krzowski - Poland
Patrik Kopcinski - Poland

João Pereira and Vasco Ferreira - Portugal

Miguel Ferreira, Guilherme Aresta, and Daniel Carvalho - Portugal

Miguel Moral Sola and Rafael Ferrer Fernandez - Spain
Nicolás Marí Hernández, Olivier van Donselaar, and Pere Balaguer Gimeno
- Spain

Asia-Pacific

Luke Ditria and Johnny Udall - Australia

Nasir Uddin and AKM Shoaibul Islam - Bangladesh

Ali Ashraf Mohd Rozaiddin, Muhammad Irsyad Aripin, and Mohd Aizat Mohd
Ezmir - Malaysia

Bhoomika Agarwal and Shruthi C - India
Mohit Singhala - India
Nesar M.N. - India
Kavin Sundar Nath - India
Sachin Kukke - India
Shri Shankari - India

Anna Yang and Cindy Chen - Taiwan
Sakomizu Wei-yu and Eileen Hess - Taiwan

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 centers 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.

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For more information, please contact:
Dianna Lai/Michelle Chang
StrategicAmpersand Inc. (for Lenovo Canada)
416-961-5595
dianna@stratamp.com / michelle@stratamp.com

Ann Mahdy
Lenovo Canada
416-383-4974
annmahdy@lenovo.com

Anna Richardson
YouTube
richardsona@youtube.com


Dianna Lai
Consultant, Public Relations
StrategicAmpersand Inc.
250 Bloor Street East, Suite 1440
Toronto, ON M4W 1E6
416-961-5595 x440
@Dee_Elle ( http://twitter.com/#!/Dee_Elle )
 ( http://www.stratamp.com/20thAnniversary )