The Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award
Google announced the 2019 Science Fair results on 29 July. Against the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award sits Celestine Wenardy of Indonesia, who “created an affordable, non-invasive method for testing blood sugar levels in her community”.
It is one of four special awards given by the fair's partners alongside the grand prize, each judged with a representative of the partner organisation on the panel. The 2019 judges included people from Virgin Galactic, LEGO Education, Scientific American and National Geographic, chaired by Mariette DiChristina of Scientific American.
The problem the project addressed
The two words in Google's description that carry the weight are affordable and non-invasive. Conventional blood glucose testing is invasive by design, and its consumables have to be bought again every time, which turns a chronic condition into a recurring expense as much as a medical one.
A method that removes both constraints changes who can monitor their condition and how often. The announcement does not state what physical principle the device used, how accurate it was against a laboratory reference, whether it was clinically tested, or whether it was ever produced beyond a prototype. Those questions are unanswered in the record available here.
The 2019 field
Thousands of entries were narrowed to 24 finalist teams representing 14 countries. The grand prize went to Fionn Ferreira of Ireland for removing microplastics from wastewater, work that DiChristina, as chief judge, credited with “tenacity and dedication to solving an important environmental problem”.
The remaining special awards went to Tuan Dolmen of Turkey, who harvested energy from tree vibrations; Aman KA and AU Nachiketh of India, for an environmentally safe rubber coagulation process using fruit; and Daniel Kazantsev of Russia, for a communication aid for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Four of the five headline awards in 2019 went to projects aimed at problems in the winners' own countries.
What a student award does and does not establish
A prize from a science fair records the judgement of a panel on a project presented to it. It is not a clinical endorsement, a regulatory approval or evidence that a device works outside the conditions it was demonstrated under, and nothing in Google's announcement claims otherwise.
Read on those terms, the award is still substantial. It places one project at the top of a worldwide field in a competition judged by editors, engineers and scientists, and it identifies the problem the project was built to solve in the words of the organisation that gave the prize.
What is documented — and what is not
The firm facts are the award, the year, the country, the stated description of the project and the scale of the field, all published by Google on 29 July 2019.
Everything else is missing from these sources. No age, date of birth, school or city appears, no photograph, no quotation from her and no technical specification. There is no prize amount disclosed and no follow-up reporting, so nothing here establishes whether the method was developed, tested or used after the fair.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rishi Shiv Prasanna | India | Winning the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in 2023 at eight, for… | Age 0 |
| Cannan Huey-You | United States | Presenting research on a Milky Way gas cloud at the American Astronomical… | Age 11 |
| Ángela Olazarán Laureano | Mexico | An AI medical assistant built in Veracruz, designed to work where there is | Age 14 |
| Émer Hickey | Ireland | Co-winning the 2014 Google Science Fair grand prize | Age 16 |
| Celestine Wenardy | Indonesia | Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award, Google Science Fair 2019 | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award at the 2019 Google Science Fair (Google)
- Project described as an affordable, non-invasive method for testing blood sugar levels
- 24 finalist teams from 14 countries; grand prize to Fionn Ferreira of Ireland
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- No technical description, accuracy data or clinical testing published for the device
- No age, school, city, photograph or quotation in the source
- No prize amount disclosed and no follow-up reporting after July 2019
Questions people ask about Celestine Wenardy
What did Celestine Wenardy win?
The Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award at the 2019 Google Science Fair, for an affordable, non-invasive method of testing blood sugar levels.
How does the test work?
Google's announcement does not describe the method or the technology behind it, and no other source in this record does.
Was it clinically validated?
No source in this record states that it was. The award records a judging panel's decision, not a clinical or regulatory approval.
How old is Celestine Wenardy?
No source in this record gives her age or date of birth.
Who won the 2019 grand prize?
Fionn Ferreira of Ireland, for a method of removing microplastics from wastewater.
Is Celestine Wenardy on Wikipedia?
No Wikipedia article was found for her. Google's winners announcement is the primary published record.
How large was the field?
Twenty-four finalist teams from fourteen countries, selected from thousands of entries.
Where is she now?
No source in this record says. The published trail ends with the July 2019 announcement.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Wenardy’s story?
What was Celestine Wenardy's project?
Which award did she win in 2019?
Which country does she represent?
Sources
- Students changing the world — this year's Science Fair winners — Google (The Keyword), 2019-07-29
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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