Landon Donovan is leading the US team to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and opening against England tomorrow. The team is going in as the underdogs, so it will be exciting to see how the game unfolds tomorrow. Best of luck Landon!

Many people may not know this but Landon Donovan is also a proponent of reading and education. After all, he comes from a family of teachers – his grandmother, mother and sister are teachers.

When Inspire first launched, we asked Landon to tell us what the inspirations in his life were. He has an amazing career in professional soccer and is an inspiration to many young aspiring players. Check out the video below to find out what inspired Landon as he was growing up.

We’d also like to hear your stories of inspiration. Go to our Share section to submit a story or video.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Looking to brush up on your 21st century teaching skills?

Intel is hosting a webinar as part of its Intel Teach Elements series of professional development courses. Join Judi Yost for an overview of the Intel Teach Elements Courses next week, June 17 at 1:00 pm PT.

Intel® Teach Elements is a series of compelling, online professional development courses that explore 21st century learning concepts. Current courses inspire educators with action planning exercises to apply the concepts of Assessment in 21st Century Classrooms and Project-Based Approaches. Courses are free at www.intel.com/teachers.

Register to Attend.

We asked ISEF’s People’s Choice Award Winners what their thoughts were on winning.

Here’s what they said!:

“Wow. Winning this award was quite shocking. I didn’t believe we would even have a chance at winning first place, primarily because of the fact that Matt and I go to a private school consisting of about 300 high school students that we could ask to vote. It’s completely amazing how much support we received, and astonishing to see that many people saw our project to be a new and innovative idea that is both cool and inspiring.

Though the People’s Choice Award only awards prizes to the top three projects, every project that was on the poll is a project that strongly fits the criteria of Inspired By Education’s People’s Choice Award: a creative and innovative project and solution that has the potential to positively change the world. For that, everyone should be congratulated once again.” Akash Krishnan

Don’t stay up too many endless nights, Akash! We couldn’t agree more that the world would be at a loss if there were no bright, young scientists out there.

“Thank you to everyone who voted for us. We are honored to be the People’s Choice Award winners and will use our laptops to run as servers, allowing for faster results in our future work. In addition, I would like to encourage all students to work on science research projects as they have helped me gain knowledge and life experience.” Matthew Fernandez

Our sentiments exactly- we, too, want to encourage all students to work on science research projects!

What do you plan on doing with your prize?
“I am planning to donate the cash value of the prize I have earned, about $300, to my non-profit organization Spell Success. I founded this study group almost two years ago to inspire young students to learn vocabulary, public speaking, and spelling skills. This summer, I am organizing the first annual Spell Success summer camp and spelling bee, and I will be using the People’s Choice Award to give scholarships and prizes to the winners of the bee.

It is an honor for me to receive this award, and I know I could not have achieved it without my teachers, students in Spell Success and their parents, and friends. Some of my friends and teachers even told me they were typing until their hands were sore! I was extremely touched to know so many people support me. I hope my participation in these awards will inspire others to learn science and to participate in competitions like Intel ISEF. ISEF was a life-changing experience for me.” Amy Chyao

Best of luck with your non-profit, Amy! It is great that you’re reusing your prize money for such a noble cause.

“I am so honored to win 3rd place in the People’s Choice Awards. Thanks so much to everybody who voted for me! In this year’s phase of my project, Polyethylene Oxide significantly improved the reclamation of damaged land by reducing water erosion by 94%! I am confident that this can be applied to our environment to protect and preserve land. I am really excited to receive an iPod Touch. The iPod I have now is extremely dysfunctional because my younger sister accidently dropped it in the toilet. It still plays music, but the lack of a screen and the damaged wiring hasn’t been fun to deal with. Let’s just say that I am ecstatic to receive a new iPod Touch. Thanks for your votes!” Majdolene Khweis

Majdolene, the potential implications of your project are astounding and can go a long way to helping society. Hope you enjoy your newly functional iPod Touch!

Another huge CONGRATULATIONS and a very big THANKS to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners for sharing their thoughts with us on Inspired By Education!!

The votes have been tallied and the polls have closed. This year, over 180,000 votes were cast for Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair People’s Choice Awards and the competition was fierce! People voted for the project they felt was not only the most creative and innovative, but the one that they also felt had the most potential to positively change the world. Throughout the voting period, several key players fought for the lead. And now, here are the final winners:

With over 60,000 votes, first place goes to Akash Krishnan and Matthew Fernandez of Oregon Episcopal High School! For their project, “The Classification and Recognition of Emotions in Prerecorded Speech”, they developed a program that with 77% accuracy can determine and classify emotions from an input signal. The real-world implications of emotion recognition are great: it has applications in security, gaming, user-computer interactions, lie-detection, and enhancing synthesized speech. Krishnan and Fernandez plan to pursue this project in the next 2 years and acquire a patent.

Second place was taken home by Texan Amy Chyao. Her project, “Lights, Quantum Dots, Action!” developed a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment which uses light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer cells. The results show that her work has significant potential for future application in cancer treatment. Chyao hopes to pursue a Ph.D. and M.D. and become a college chemistry professor and biomedical researcher.

Last but certainly not least, taking home third place, was Majdolene Khweis of Taos, New Mexico, with her project, “Don’t Let It Slide IV: Fire Factor!” After seeing landslides in California and New Mexico due to forest fires and failed re-seeding efforts, she became interested in preserving the environment. Her project sought to use a biodegradeable polymer to assist with the regeneration of soil and plants, and to prevent erosion of slopes to protect and regenerate the environment as well as human life and property.

Krishnan and Fernandez have won themselves a brand new laptop, while Chyao will have a netbook and Khweis takes home an iTouch- not too shabby!

CONGRATULATIONS to all the competitors and winners, and a huge thank you to YOU-the voter!

Whether it was by gazing up at a starry night or by making a magnifying glass from a broken soda bottle, today’s greatest science and math minds all got their inspiration from somewhere. Watch Big Think’s “Moments of Genius” video series to get insights into their moments of genius.

Justin Rattner, Intel’s Chief Technology Officer developed the first computer to sustain one trillion operations per second in 1996. Watch the video below to find out what inspired Justin to build the world’s fastest computer.