SciGirl Extraordinaire | Claire Dworsky, KSC water quality winner

Here's a young scientist making a real splash! Meet Claire Dworsky, the winner of Kids' Science Challenge water quality competition. This California girl's investigation was derived on the soccer field! Her question: "Can we test different stages of the water cycle runoff from grass and turf fields to see if one is more toxic than the other and if they could hurt plants, people, animals or ocean life?”

UC Santa Cruz scientist Adina Paytan helped mentor Claire with her inquiry. To learn more about the project, check out the Kids' Science Challenge website.

SciGirls Mentors | Women's Initiative at MIT

What do designing pharmaceutical drugs and prosthetic limbs, Internet programs and gaming software, and eco-friendly buildings and clean water systems have in common? They are all jobs for engineers.

This is the message engineering students from the Women’s Initiative, an MIT student program dedicated to encouraging more women to pursue careers in engineering, deliver to girls nationwide. During the month of January, enthusiastic women from the School of Engineering at MIT travel widely, speaking with high school girls about the excitement of careers in engineering.

“We want women to know that engineering is an option for them,” says Janice Mathew, an MIT junior who is majoring in chemical engineering.

Fellow student An Vu, who studies nuclear engineering, notes that visiting engineers in her own high school helped her decide on engineering. Today, as a senior at MIT, she's glad she made the leap and likes the idea of encouraging other young women to do the same. “It’s such a fun career path with many options. We do a lot of group work and use our science, math and analytical skills to solve problems. Engineering is a chance to make a difference in the world and to help other people, and that’s the message we want to get out to these young ladies.”

Want to know more? Click here to read an article about Women’s Initiative mentors recent visit to Canyon Lake High in the hill country of Texas. Know another great mentoring program like the MIT Women’s Initiative? Tell SciGirls all about it!

SciGirls Mentor | Patricia Wright, Primatologist

Primatologist Patricia Wright, one of the world's leading experts on lemurs, has studied the species in Madagascar for over twenty years. You know lemurs: the tiny, wide-eyed prosimians with striped tails (think King Julien from the Madagascar movies). Turns out the island of Madagascar, off the east coast of African, is the only place on the planet these creatures are found. And Wright was instrumental in helping establish the country's leading protected area for this rare wildlife. In fact, she's often called a "conservation hero" for her work.

Dr. Wright is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University and the Executive Director for the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments. In 1986, she and her colleagues discovered a new species of lemur, the golden bamboo lemur. Want to know more? Check out the Nova special on Patricia Wright.

Do you know an interesting scientist like Dr. Wright we should feature on SciGirls? Tell us about her.

SciGirls Mentor | Nerd Girls

Brains are beautiful.
Geek is Chic.
Smart is sexy.

This is the working mantra of Nerd Girls, a growing, global movement that celebrates the smart-girl individuality that’s revolutionizing our future.

Nerd Girls want to encourage other girls to change their world through Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, while embracing their feminine power.

The first Nerd Girls Club was founded by Dr. Karen Panetta at Tufts University to empower her female engineering students and challenge the stereotypes about women in engineering. Dr. Panetta has been instrumental in shifting attitudes about women engineers, utilizing film, television and web media to extend the reach of Nerd Girls.

If you know any powerful mentors like Nerd Girls, tell us about them. We're waiting to hear from you!

SciGirls Mentor | Kristi Curry Rogers, Paleontologist

Do you know those stories about people who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up as children and then went out made it happen? Vertebrate paleontologist Kristi Curry Rogers is that kind of gal!

Growing up in Missouri, Kristi was a bonafide dinosaur freak! As an undergraduate, she studied at Montana State University, a hotbed of dinosaur research. She went on to receive a Ph.D in Anatomical Sciences from Stony Brook University in New York.

Today, Kristi specializes in the long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs known as sauropods. This group included the largest terrestrial vertabrates of all time. Kristi says, "They are perfect fodder for my interest in dinosaur evolution and offer a wealth of data on the biological consequences of living life at large size."

Kristi's career takes her to museums and field digs all around the world from Montana to Zimbabwe and from Madagascar to Argentina! She also teaches at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Kristi has even named several species of dinosaurs. So you could say Kristi Curry Rogers is a SciGirl who DREAMS BIG!