What does a scientist look like? You!

What does a scientist look like? For many years, the answer to that question was a Caucasian male, often with a funny hairdo and a lab coat. But women are scientists too, and science, technology, engineering and math (or STEM) fields are better for it.

Science News for Students is working on a big feature story about the importance of women in STEM — and the challenges they face. For our feature, we want to show our student readers as many STEM women as we can. And this means we need you!

Are you a female-identifying person in science, technology, engineering or math? We want to see you and hear your voice. Inspired by the popular Tumblr, This is what a scientist looks like, Science News for Students is collecting images, audio recordings and short video clips of women in STEM. Send us an image of you in the lab, doing what you do best. Or you can send a picture of you at home, at school, in the field or engaging in your favorite hobby. You can also send in short audio clips about your life in science.

Each image or audio clip should contain the following information:

• Your name
• Where you work
• What kind of scientist you are and what you study
• An interesting fact about yourself (and it doesn’t have to be STEM-related)

Please send your images, sound clips and video to sciencenewsforstudents@gmail.com by September 9, 2016. We will highlight five or so of your images, videos and sound bites in our feature story. The rest will go right here on this blog, to show students everywhere examples of fantastic, brilliant women in STEM.

Here, I’ll start!

My name is Bethany Brookshire, and I’m a writer with Science News for Students and Society for Science and the Public. Before I became a writer, I got a degree in pharmacology — the study of medicines and how they work. I studied drugs of abuse — such as cocaine — as well as antidepressant drugs, trying to figure out how they do what they do. An interesting fact about me? When I was 18, I licked a banana slug — the large, bright yellow slugs that live in the redwood forests of California. I licked the slime to see if it would turn my tongue numb. It did.

Follow Eureka! Lab on Twitter