Who runs the STEM world? At EYH 2025, middle school girls.
By Héctor L. Torres Vera
Amidst cherry blossom petals and giddy graduation photoshoots, UC Berkeley hosted the annual Expanding your Horizons (EYH) conference on April 12th, 2025. This graduate student-led event offers a glimpse into the world of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). It's designed for 5th to 8th-grade girls*, trans youth, and gender non-conforming and/or non-binary youth.
Over three hundred middle school students and fifty parents graced the halls of the Valley Life Sciences Building; EYH t-shirts in assorted pastels zipped through hallways into a large auditorium. At the front of the stage stood Anastasiya “Anna” C. Trzcinski and Meghan Pressimone, MCB PhD candidates and co-chairs for the event. They worked with a committee of over forty and more than one hundred volunteers to make the event a resounding success.
A thoughtfully constructed day full of STEM excitement
To start the day, Dr. Eve Martinez, a chemist at Mosaic Inc, gave a keynote talk describing her academic and scientific journey—she currently studies metal organic frameworks for use in capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. Martinez ended her talk in a Q&A, answering earnestly and stressing the importance of having support circles you can lean on when challenges arise.
After the speaker’s address, Pressimone used her brilliant cheer and influence to not only get a room full of students excited about the day, but orchestrate their movements from the auditorium to their designated classrooms. A fourth year student working alongside Professor Alanna Schepartz, Pressimone is no stranger to project management nor the stage. When not two-stepping on the floors of Ashkenaz, she works on developing ways to hijack the protein synthesis machinery in cells.
"It was a fun combination of science, math, and chemistry," said one participant.
"I really loved the coding class-we got to use Python, and there's all these little bits of code that I didn't know about!", commented another.
The mission of EYH is important to Pressimone, as she herself benefited greatly from role models throughout her life. She recalls many teachers during her childhood worked to great lengths to elicit excitement in their students for STEM. The possibility of being that person for someone is a key motivator for the co-chair and many of its volunteers.
Not only does the EYH conference set the stage for middle schoolers to engage with role models, it also fosters learning about STEM in a collaborative and fun environment.
Throughout the day, attendees participate in a variety of workshops all designed and led by graduate student volunteers. Some students extracted DNA from strawberries, others made slime and learned about polymers, and a creative coding workshop saw the rise of several to-be ethical hackers.
Co-chair Trzcinski, who works with Professor Kathy Collins, stressed that the breadth of STEM the attendees are exposed to is a vital feature of the programming. “This is an opportunity for them to spend a day exploring different topics they might have never interacted with before and see which ones they like the best.”
A third year in the program, Trzcinski studies RNA-mediated strategies to insert DNA into the genome. Her passion for research was also greatly inspired by role models in her youth. She recalls one such teacher, “...he had a giant pet turtle whose name was Hot Dog and a passion for science that was infectious.”
A passion so contagious it now spans generations—Trzcinski enjoys interacting with the curiosity students bring to EYH. “Being a scientist is learning a new language—the language of science. There are so many new words that are all important and meaningful,” she explains. “When you are talking to middle schoolers about science, you have to break down these complex things into their basic component parts. And they love it!”
The event also features workshops for parents. Throughout the morning session, parents listened to a series of seminars that highlighted available initiatives and organizations that invest in STEM across the county. One parent commented, “It was helpful to find out about the many different resources in the Bay that I hadn’t heard about.” Another parent added, “I learned about summer programs that focused on science I never heard about–I knew the Lawrence Hall of Science was great, but I didn’t know they had such a long list of programs for teens and children. I hardly recognized anything on the list. It was great!”
"Just being able to help girls connect things they love to science is so important." - Parent attendee
Parents were also excited to see the sheer amount of students participating in the event. “It’s so great to see girls with similar interests in one place,” said one parent. “I’m a female scientist, and it’s important to let girls feel confident,” added another.
Towards a female future in STEM
Despite some advances towards gender parity in several fields, women STEM graduates have remained at around 35% for the past 10 years. Research also shows that women are disproportionately affected by sexual harassment and nearly twice as times likely to leave academia.
Trans women and gender non-conforming people face even harsher realities. What’s more, data regarding their representation across STEM fields has been scrubbed from many government websites, despite recent advances in demographic data collection.
Initiatives like EYH have worked for decades to amend a legacy of inequities in STEM by engaging with them early on. Pressimone believes middle school “is a time in your life where you're figuring out who you are and what you enjoy. Something as simple as exposure—a good experience, something extra—can really be encouraging.”
Megan Onyundo, lead coordinator in marketing for the event, believes the initiative needs to continue growing to address systemic inequities in the Bay.
Onyundo is a fourth year student in Professor Rebecca Heald’s lab. She balances research with a passion for volleyball. Both are talents she thanks the support from her parents for. Onyundo says that encouragement had an overwhelmingly positive effect on her confidence in being both a researcher and an athlete. “I never thought I couldn’t do something because my parents always told me I could do anything.”
As an EYH volunteer for three years, she has worked to increase the scope of the conference to over one hundred schools in the Bay. “Having a program like this allows you to be a source of support for someone. Be that little spark that encourages students to say: oh, science is cool.” Onyundo is also part of the HHMI Gilliam Fellows Program, which invests in graduate trainees who are committed to advancing inclusion and excellence in science.
One must acknowledge the scale and ambitiousness of an event like EYH. Besides being run entirely by students, funding for the event comes mainly from personal contributions and donations from local companies. It’s thanks to both that effort and capital that EYH can continue to thrive and increase the reach of their programming.
Initiatives to encourage women to pursue careers in STEM are vital. Not only are their perspectives crucial for the advancement of research, representation is also imperative for funding decisions that disproportionately affect women.
Be sure to visit the EYH website to learn more about the organization, find volunteer opportunities for the next conference, and to donate to this incredibly valuable organization.
*A note on the use of the word “girls”: Expanding your Horizons has historically served young cisgender girls, but trans youth and gender non-conforming and/or non-binary youth are highly encouraged to apply. The organization does not limit participation nor discriminate based on sex, gender, gender expression, race, color, religion, national origin, or disability.
Photo credits: Johnny Gan Chong
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