With more than eight hours of daily laboratory work, Sophia King describes her life as a research scientist as “long and dreary with pockets of great excitement,” which for most people may be pretty ordinary.
A University of California, Los Angeles student pursuing a Masters in Materials Chemistry, King is anything but ordinary as she is part of the less than 30% of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) researchers in the world who are women.
In fact, according to the 2017 report ‘Cracking the Code: Women and Girls in STEM,” which was published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), only 17 women have won a Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry or medicine since Marie Curie in 1903, compared to 572 men.