SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD
Author Claudia Kalb wrote the cover story about Leonardo da Vinci in the
May 2019 issue.Shriya Reddy can’t remember a time when she wasn’t excited about science.
At seven, she read biology books with her mother, who was studying for
her medical board exams. By sixth grade, Reddy was competing in rigorous
science fairs. The summer before ninth grade she began doing research in
a bioengineering lab at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where
she devised a noninvasive approach for rapidly diagnosing melanoma
lesions. The project earned her a top prize at the prestigious International
Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) last May.
“Science dwells on the how and why things happen,” Reddy says. “I
really want to be a part of that.” Reddy’s determination coincides with
a growing effort across the United States to boost the number of female
students pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math-
ematics (STEM). Universities and institutions, from NASA to the United
States Naval Academy, are hosting STEM days for girls. Organizations
such as the New York Academy of Sciences are pairing women in STEM
careers with girls seeking advice and mentorship. ISEF, a program of the
Washington, D.C.-based Society for Science & the Public, offers a forum
for select high school students to compete at an international level. This
year’s event had 1,842 finalists, evenly split by gender, and three of the
top four awards went to young women, including Reddy. “Just being part
of that experience blew my mind,” she says.
Mary Sue Coleman, a biochemist and president of the Association of
American Universities, is optimistic about women’s future in science. When
she was in ISEF as a high school student in 1959 and 1960, about 35 percent
of the participants were girls. Gender balance matters, she says, because
women bring fresh perspectives to tackling scientific conundrums. “People
who have different life experiences ask different questions,” she says. Clear
gaps remain. Young women at ISEF outnumbered males in microbiology
and biochemistry this year, but they made up fewer than a third of the final-
ists in mathematics and engineering mechanics. More women are getting
advanced STEM degrees, but men hold most professorships and leadership
roles in STEM-based industries, the Association for Women in Science says.
Still, a transformation is taking place, says Maya Ajmera, president and
CEO of the Society for Science & the Public. Young women, inventive and
tenacious, are harnessing technology to tackle issues they care about,
whether it’s engineering nutritionally advanced rice or using a crochet-
ing technique to design a wearable Bluetooth device. For these emerging
scientists, “it’s going to be different,” Ajmera says. “I feel very confident
that this generation of girls is in a much better place to take on the world’s
most intractable problems.” j
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