Google’s App Engine is used for a lot of different web applications. While it can be used for business applications, the more interesting uses come from the scientific and research fields. Google is now going to reward those who use app engine in the most interesting ways.

Google announced today the creation of the Google+App+Engine+Blog%29″>App Engine Research Awards. These awards will go to support 15 projects that use App Engine to push scientific and academic research into new areas. The winners will each receive App Engine credits in the amount of $60,000 for one year to help continue their research. As an added bonus, Google Cloud storage will also be coming to these projects as part of the program.

Some of the suggestions Google gives as projects they’re interested in are “social or economic experiments, developing academic aids, analysis of gene sequence data, or using App Engine MapReduce in ways we hadn’t even discovered.” They also say that if your research “has the potential to advance discovery, generates heavy data loads or is in need of an easy-to-use, easy-to-scale platform, we encourage you to submit your proposal.”

Well, you heard them. If your research project could use some funding to continue the research on App Engine, you have until May 11 to submit your proposal. I’m sure Google would just love it if you could figure out how to power a megalomaniacal AI with a potato.

DISCLAIMER: Google will not fund projects such as this: