Gopal, of Lawrenceville, N.J., was chosen as a finalist for his project, "Point of Care Testing for Malaria Using a Smartphone and Microfluidic ELISA."

"Malaria kills nearly 1 million people yearly, mostly in Africa and India. A simple and inexpensive way to track progression of the malaria parasite is needed," Gopal said in his bio on the science fair website.

"I created a portable system to detect malaria proteins using ELISA (enzyme linked immunosorbent assay)," he said, adding the system is designed for rural settings. "My system uses a smartphone and a microfluidic disc which uses centrifugal force instead of electricity to mix reagents."

The cost of each sample is less than $10, he said.

Cheerla, of Cupertino, Calif., was selected as a global finalist for her project, "Automated Prediction of Future Breast Cancer Occurrence from Non-Cancerous Mammograms."

"I developed an automated model that can accurately predict the probability of an individual developing breast cancer in the future from her screening mammograms," she explained.

The Indian American teen, instead of focusing only on the percentage of dense tissue in the breast, used a novel bag of words approach to represent each mammogram as a set of histogram features. She then built an ensemble classification system to predict future cancer risk from these histogram features.

Naiknaware, of Portland, Ore., was selected as a finalist for her project, "Fractal Inspired Chitosan and Carbon Nanoparticle Based Biocompatible Sensor for Wound Management."

"This project aimed to create an inexpensive, biocompatible and reliable sensor which can detect and monitor moisture level in the wound dressing," she said.

Her project's approach uses biopolymer chitosan in conjunction with carbon nanoparticles to effectively obtain all the required features. Prototype sensors were optimized over two generation.

The data obtained through characterization in a controlled environment show successful meeting of the all the design objectives, she said.

Also among the finalists are Indian origin students Mansha Fatima and Shriank K., as well as Bangladeshi student Saliha Rehanaz.

Several awards, outside of the grand prize, will be handed out among the finalists.

The projects that have attempted to solve engineering challenges will be eligible to win the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award or the LEGO Education Builder Award.

The projects that offer a new way to look at the world, asking questions and answering them with experimentation will be eligible to win the National Geographic Explorer Award or Scientific American Innovator Award.

Community Impact Awards and an Inspiring Educator Award will also be handed out. A total of $120,000 in prizes will be divvied out.

Each of the 16 finalists, for reaching this phase of the competition, will receive LEGO Education, Virgin Galactic and Google goodie bags, as well as Scientific American and National Geographic subscriptions.

India-based student Advay Ramesh was recognized as a Community Impact Award winner during the competition, though he did not earn a global finalist spot.

Many other Indian Americans and South Asian Americans were among the regional finalists, including Ritik Patnaik, Rishab Gargeya, Kashfia Rahman, Shobhita Sundaram, Mythri Ambatipudi, Maya Varma, Anusha Bhattacharyya, Chirag Kumar and Nikhil Cheerla .

Indian origin students Aswath Suryanarayanan, Seerat Kaur, Siddharth Pullabhatla, Shreyas Kapur, Shivam Singh, Shubham Natraj, Ayush Panda, Tejit Pabari, Dileep Dasari and Tanmay Vadhera were also among the 100 regional finalists, as well as Sri Lankans Nishen Menerapitiya and Abishek Gomes.

The winners of each award will be announced Sept. 27 during a ceremony at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.