In all her middle school years of attending STEM competitions, Diamond Bar High School junior Zaina Siyed never saw a fellow Muslim girl competing. All that changed this year when she decided to set up FemSTEM Robotics Scholarship Program, the first all-female Muslim robotics team in the country.

FemSTEM is a team of eight  girls of ages 10 to 15. Most of them have never considered trying robotics, computer science or engineering programs prior to joining. Now, they are regularly exposed to these as they learn the fundamentals of robotics, programming and design.

“There’s not a lot of girls in STEM. There’s even less minority girls,” Siyed said. “If I can inspire these girls to do STEM and they in turn can inspire others, I will have succeeded in my goal.”

Muslims, especially females, have been severely underrepresented in the science workforce. With FemSTEM, Siyed hopes to encourage Muslim girls to enter the world of STEM and foster leadership skills that will lead them to success.

“It’s showing you that there’s a population of Muslim girls who are smart and that they can go to important places if they want to,” Siyed said.

While Siyed’s work in robotics impacted her community and nation, she said she was never interested in STEM at an early age. However, meeting Melissa and Lavanya Jawaharlal, two Muslim sisters who opened STEM Center USA, inspired her to pursue robotics.

Under their guidance, she became the youngest instructor at STEM Center USA and a two time state championship qualifier with awards for mechanical design and the research project categories as a middle school student. At the time, she also mentored her middle school team and helped them reach state championships.

Now, as the mentor of FemSTEM, Siyed meets with her team every weekend to coach four-hour practice sessions at the Institute of Knowledge, a school that allows the use of its facility in exchange for affiliation with the organization.

There, the girls are mentored by Siyed while they prepare for their upcoming FIRST Lego League competition during November by exploring the workings of robotics and practice building robots.

The process of setting up FemSTEM consisted of her spreading the word about the organization, raising money on Gofundme, finding a practice location at IOK, and selecting applicants from those who applied via an online application.

Currently, she is in the lengthy process of registering FemSTEM as a nonprofit organization. Once it is officially recognized as a nonprofit, she plans to write to potential corporate sponsors.

To financially support FemSTEM, Siyed set up a funding campaign on Gofundme. Within three months, 40 people had donated $3,812, surpassing her original goal of $3,690. The money raised from the campaign will go toward buying robotic kits, practice FLL competition materials and tuition prizes for Creative Robotics class.

“Now that they’re aware that something like this is happening, they want to support an effort like this and [because they know] that it’s an important cause,” Siyed said.

As a junior, she focuses on balancing schoolwork with the time she spends on FemSTEM.

While she is part of the BrahmaTech program at DBHS, she did not join the robotics team so she could focus on enhancing her own program.

“I don’t try to cut anything short with the program for my own benefit,” Siyed said.

In upcoming years, she hopes to expand the group into two teams and further spread FemSTEM across the nation by holding workshops and speaking events in other cities. She also may have some of the girls, who will be graduating from the program this year, help mentor the team next year.

“It makes me really happy that I [am] able to do something like this and utilize my skills for something after I stopped competing in middle school,” Siyed said. “I get to teach [and] use that knowledge for something that the girls can hopefully benefit from.”

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