Top 5 Winners in National STEM Competition are All Girls

Credit: Linda Doane Photo

This just goes to show the power of women in STEM!

At this year’s national science and engineering competition for middle school students, all five of the top winners were girls, the first time that this has happened.

The Broadcom MASTERS, or Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars, is an annual competition run by the Society for Science & the Public and the nonprofit Broadcom Foundation.

The top winners were announced in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 29. After participating in local, regional and state science fairs, 30 finalists from a pool of 2,348 applicants in 47 states were chosen to go to to the nation’s capital for a week. This year, 18 girls and 12 boys flew out to Washington for the competition.

Maya Ajmera, president and CEO of the Society for Science & the Public told ABC News that she was “thrilled” that this year’s top five winners were girls.

“This is the first time in our history that it was a sweep for girls. It’s also the first time in our history that we had more girl finalists than boy finalists,” Ajmera said.

All finalists were judged on leadership, teamwork, problem solving and communication, and were selected as winners by a panel of educators, scientists and engineers.

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