American Association of University Women

4 amazing accomplishments of women and girls in STEM

You might not have heard about these women and girls doing awesome work in STEM fields, and that’s exactly why we’re marking Women in Science and Tech month.

“Squishy” circuits that let kids be electrical engineers. Building electrical circuits isn’t as complicated as it looks – it’s as simple as playing with play dough. Annemarie Thomas created a unique play dough that can be used to build working circuits that anyone can build and experiment with. The coolest thing about the squishy circuits? You can make them yourself at home.

Songs that make math rock. One reason girls say they aren’t getting into STEM? They’re “just not interested” in math and science. Cynthia White spent many years as an engineer, but she decided to change careers to tackle the problem of women and minorities’ low representation in the STEM fields. She created the Arythmetic Jukebox, a series of songs that aim to make math fun and exciting.

An app that helps doctors diagnose breast cancer. Identifying malignant tumors that may lead to breast cancer? There’s an app for that. Brittany Wenger’s (pictured above) Cloud4Cancer won the Google Science Fair, and for good reason – using a minimally invasive procedure, Cloud4Cancer finds tumors with 99% accuracy. Wenger was 17 when she created the app.

A pain-relief device for amputees. “Phantom” pain in missing limbs affects about 80 percent of amputees. No one knows that better than Katherine Bomkamp, who was working closely with returning soldiers who had lost limbs at war when she came up with the idea for the Pain Free Socket. Bomkamp’s invention, created while she was in high school, fits right into prosthetics and uses heat to relieve phantom pain.