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Maia Weinstock

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Weinstock in 2010

Maia Weinstock is an American science writer and Lego enthusiast who resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Brown University in 1999,[1] and is Deputy Editor of MIT News.[2][3]

Biography

Before working at MIT, she worked at BrainPOP,[4] and was an editor for SPACE.com and other science publications.[5]

In 2014, Weinstock was cited by Judith Newman of The New York Times as "a Wikipedian who has been instrumental in raising awareness" of the gender imbalance on that online encyclopedia; her article on how notability is determined on Wikipedia immediately provoked other Wikipedia editors to create a page about Newman.[4][6]

In addition to her editing work, Weinstock has been an editor of Wikipedia for a number of years, and has been involved in efforts to reduce the gender gap among editors and articles that occur on the site. This work includes working at edit-a-thons on Ada Lovelace Day, as well.[7]

A fan of Lego mini-figures, she first started building them for living scientists, the first being her friend Carolyn Porco.[7] Eventually, this included a submission to the Lego Ideas contest called the "Legal Justice League", which was designed to look like a courtroom built out of Lego bricks, and contained miniature versions of Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.[8] The submission was declined by LEGO as being too political, which led to an increase in publicity for the project, and eventually led to a submission with generic justices. A Boston Globe reporter described Weinstock's apartment as having "[s]tacks of heads and hairstyles, torsos and legs and arms, a pint-sized Frankenstein's workshop stored in little plastic bins".[9]

In March 2017, Lego announced that it would be making a "Women of NASA" set, based on a design Weinstock had submitted.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Goodbye, Columbus". Brown University Alumni Magazine. August 2009. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  2. ^ "Who We Are". MIT News. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  3. ^ "Women in science target Wikipedia". Portland Press Herald. 16 October 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  4. ^ a b Newman, Judith (8 January 2015). "Wikipedia, What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page?". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  5. ^ "Index". 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  6. ^ Newman, Judith (January 16, 2014). "Wiki-Validation: A Wikipedia Page for Judith Newman Is Approved". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2015.
  7. ^ a b Ziv, Stav (18 March 2015). "Legal Justice League Lego Maker on Writing Women Into History". Newsweek. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  8. ^ Palmer, Anthony (13 March 2015). "Lego Says You Can't Build That — Because Of Politics". NPR. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  9. ^ Weiss, Joanna (4 April 2015). "Dreaming of Lego equality". Boston Globe. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  10. ^ Kennedy, Merrit (1 March 2017). "Women Of NASA To Be Immortalized — In Lego Form". NPR.
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