Avengers of the Week | Sophia Spencer, 8-Year-Old Bug Expert, and Morgan Jackson, PhD Student

She may have been teased for her love of insects, but  8-year-old Sophia Spencer persisted.. When she continued to pepper her mom Nicole with questions about whether this love of insects could turn into a job someday, Nicole took to Twitter to get some help.

Using the #BugsR4Girls hashtag, hundreds of scientists, both men and women, reached out to Sophia with words of support and offers to share resources. But it was Ph.D. student Morgan Jackson who suggested they work together to write a paper “about the role Twitter can serve in promoting women in science.” That paper has since been published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America and earned Sophia well-deserved respect at school showing  that, indeed, #BugsR4Girls.

Avenger of the Week 8-yr-old Sophia Spencer & @BioInFocus got into a science journal. #BugsR4Girls #genderavenger http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/19/551876044/once-teased-for-her-love-of-bugs-8-year-old-co-authors-scientific-paper