The pool of entrants to Google’s 2012 Science Fair has been winnowed down to 90 insanely brilliant finalists from different regions around the world. Winners from each of the three age divisions will compete for the Grand Prize of a $50,000 scholarship, a personal LEGO mosaic, a trip to the Galapagos to visit Darwin’s Living Laboratory, and most likely enough worldwide notoriety that they’ll be fielding job offers from CERN, Fermilab, NASA, or just about any other high-profile science organization.

Among those 90 finalists, 13 of them have been nominated for a Scientific American Science in Action Award.

The projects that these youngsters are worthy of the most utopia-laden science fiction stories you’ve ever read. A pair of collaborating entrants, for example, Emily and Trevor Wang, are investigating whether a substance collected by bees may have anti-cancer properties.

Seriously, how does anybody even think of that?

Another fantastic idea comes from Mark Liang, who’s project centers on whether sunflowers can be used to absorb and neutralize a nasty chemical that’s currently been getting dumped into the soil across California.

Here, one more in case you weren’t feeling enough inferiority about your middling lifetime accomplishments. Ivan Ang Jie Xiong explored the possibility of using robots to help keep our environment clean.

Google posted an interactive map so you can browse through all of the finalists depending on the region they’re in. Go check it out so you can start getting acquainted with your future bosses.

[Via Google’s Official Blog.]