Three American high school seniors won the three top prizes in the Intel Science Talent Search competition that drew 1,844 of their peers from around the United States.

Sponsored by Intel and run by the non-profit Society for Science & the Public, the search is the nation's oldest and most prestigious for high school seniors. It has also been called the "Super Bowl of Science."

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The search began in 1942 as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Intel became the sponsor in 1998.

Winners of this year's competition were Noah Golowich, 17, of Lexington, Massachusetts; Andrew Jin, 17, of San Jose, California and Michael Hofmann Winer, 18, of North Bethesda, Maryland. They were recently honored at a ceremony held in Washington, D.C.

The trio received a combined $150,000 in prizes.

Golowich was awarded the First Place Medal of Distinction for Basic Research for developing a "proof in the area of Ramsey theory, a field of mathematics based on finding types of structure in large and complicated systems".

Jin earned a First Place Medal of Distinction for Global Good in recognition of his development of "a machine learning algorithm to identify adaptive mutations across the human genome." His system was used to analyze "massive public genomic datasets" and managed to discover "more than 100 adaptive mutations related to immune response, metabolism, brain development, and schizophrenia in real DNA sequences".

Winer received Intel's First Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation for his research into "how fundamental quasi-particles of sound, called phonons, interact with electrons". Intel added that Winer's "work could potentially be applied to more complex atomic structures such as superconductors. Winer last year won a silver medal at the International Physics Olympiad.

Second place finishers were Brice Huang, 17, of Princeton Junction, New Jersey, Second Place Medal of Distinction for Basic Research; Kalia D. Firester, 17, of New York City, Second Place Medal of Distinction for Global Good and Saranesh Thanika Prembabu, 17, of San Ramon, California, Second Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation.

This year's Intel Science Talent Search saw 1,844 high school seniors enter the contest. That number was reduced to 40 finalists from 36 schools in 18 states.

Each of these finalists traveled to Washington D.C. for this week's final event and received a minimum of $7,500 for their efforts.

Others receiving large cash prizes and high honors in the Intel Science Talent Search 2015 competition included three second-place finishers who were given $75,000 prizes and three third-place winners who were awarded $35,000.