For years, Maia Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, has been creating miniature LEGO figurines to honor and promote such scientists and engineers as MIT Institute Professor Emerita Mildred Dresselhaus, Vice President for Research Maria T. Zuber, and Department of Chemical Engineering head Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Chair Professor in Engineering. The figures are Weinstock’s playful way of boosting the visibility of scientists, in particular the work of female scientists. 
 
 Now, a set of LEGOs Weinstock created celebrating the history of women at NASA is about to blast off. On Tuesday, LEGO announced that Weinstock’s project, which spotlights five women who made historic contributions to the U.S. space program, has been selected to become an official LEGO set. 
 
 “What a wonderful way to celebrate the scientific achievements of these five pioneering women,�? says Zuber, the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and the first woman to lead a NASA planetary mission. “And I’m thrilled with the message that these LEGOs will send to girls — that they, too, can pursue their passions in science, technology, engineering, and math, and help make a better world.�? 
 
 Last summer Weinstock submitted her concept, dubbed the Women of NASA, to LEGO Ideas, a platform that allows people around the world to propose new ideas for LEGO concepts. After a public voting period, during which Weinstock’s set received 10,000 votes in 15 days, her project underwent an official LEGO review. 
 
 Weinstock was inspired to create the set by her love of space and NASA, and her desire to showcase the contributions that women have made over the years to the field of space exploration. Above all, she hopes the set will help encourage more young girls to pursue STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). 
 
 “I hope that ‘Women of NASA’ will be one little extra brick in the wall of trying to improve how women are perceived and shown in books, toys, and family programming,�? Weinstock explains. “Anything I can do to help make sure girls understand that they can and should be interested in the sciences, engineering, and math, that is my goal. At the end of the day, that’s why I am doing this.�? 
 
 The set depicts five trailblazers in NASA’s history: Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led the development of software for the Apollo missions while at MIT; Mae Jemison, who became the first African-American woman in space in 1992; Katherine Johnson, known for calculating and verifying trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo programs; Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space in 1983; and astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, one of the first female executives at NASA, who was instrumental in the planning of the Hubble Space Telescope. 
 
 Weinstock explains that she wanted the set to feature “a very diverse group of women in terms of what they did, in terms of their fields at NASA, in terms of their cultural backgrounds, and also in terms of their age. Some are shown as younger, but I made sure I had one shown as older. Also, most of the women in the set are known for their work in the space flight program at NASA, but I wanted to give a shout out to the astronomy program as well.�? 
 
 Weinstock began creating LEGO figures back in 2009, when she constructed a LEGO likeness for her friend Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist known for her imaging work on the Voyager and Cassini missions. After sharing an image of Porco’s LEGO figurine on Twitter, Weinstock received an outpouring of positive feedback and was inspired to create more figures in an effort to help promote the work of living scientists. 
 
 Since she built her first figurine, Weinstock has created LEGOs for a number of celebrated scientists and engineers, including primatologist Jane Goodall, oceanographer Sylvia Earle, physicist Stephen Hawking, and a number of MIT faculty members such as Ernest Moniz, professor of physics and special advisor to the president, and Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. 
 
 “Being immortalized in LEGO is probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to me,�? Bhatia says. “I hope it makes lots of little tinkerers dream about being engineers at MIT someday.�? 
 
 Weinstock explains that she chose LEGOs as her medium as she feels “there is a childlike wonder to playing with a toy that you can make in people’s likeness.�? 
 
 “One major goal for me is to get the public to recognize the history of women in the STEM fields. I’m hopeful that with this set more people will come to know these women,�? Weinstock says. “Part of it is knowing these specific five women, but also part of it is setting an example. It’s really important to set an example for girls, as well as for boys, to normalize and make plain that women are expected to be in these fields and that it’s not strange or unusual.�? ||||| Science-themed project was submitted to Lego Ideas by Dr Ellen Kooijman, who recognized a gender gap in toy sets 
 
 Women in science are taking one tiny, plastic step forward after Lego announced on Tuesday it will launch a series of female scientists and their lab tools. 
 
 The science-themed project was selected as the latest Lego Ideas winner, and is set to hit shelves in August 2014. 
 
 The series – notably devoid of pink – includes an astronomer with a telescope, a paleontologist with a dinosaur skeleton and a chemist in a lab. 
 
 The project idea was submitted by Dr Ellen Kooijman, a geochemist in Stockholm. 
 
 In her project proposal, Kooijman wrote: "The motto of these [s]cientists is clear: explore the world and beyond!" 
 
 
 
 The toy company has been criticised in the past for its gender-based marketing tactics, and in particular, over a line of building blocks geared for girls called Lego Friends, featuring slim female figurines that lock into pastel-painted settings such as a beauty salon and bakery. 
 
 
 
 The debate even prompted a seven-year-old girl to write a letter to Lego asking why there are "more Lego boy people and barely any Lego girls". 
 
 In her letter, Charlotte Benjamin lamented how "all the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and had no jobs," while the boy figures went "on adventures, worked, saved people and had jobs". 
 
 On her blog, Kooijman, an avid Lego builder, said she recognized a gender gap among the figurines. 
 
 "As a female scientist I had noticed two things about the available Lego sets: a skewed male/female minifigure ratio and a rather stereotypical representation of the available female figures," she wrote. "It seemed logical that I would suggest a small set of female minifigures in interesting professions to make our Lego city communities more diverse." 
 
 Lego Ideas is a site where enthusiasts can submit and vote on ideas for sets they want to see available in toy stores. When an project receives 10,000 votes, it then enters a review phase to be evaluated by a board made up of set designers and marketing representatives, according to its website. 
 
 After testing the concepts for stability, playability, safety, market fit and more, the board selects one idea to become the next Lego Ideas product. The creator is recognized for inspiring the product and receives a cut of the product's sales. 
 
 “We’re very excited to release Ellen Kooijman’s Female Minifigure set, featuring three scientists, now entitled 'Research Institute' as our next Lego Ideas set," Lego said in a statement on its site. "This awesome model is an inspiring set that offers a lot for kids as well as adults. The final design, pricing and availability are still being worked out, but it’s on track to be released August 2014, so keep an eye out!” 
 
 Lego had not returned a request for comment at the time of publication. 
 
 Kooijman’s scientists beat out six other potential projects, among them a Sherlock set and a Legend of Zelda set. ||||| At long last, LEGO will actually have new female figurines who do something other than bake and hang out at the beach. 
 
 The Denmark-based toy company has approved new designs for female scientist, paleontologist and astronomer characters from its LEGO Ideas online competition. 
 
 “We’re very excited to release Ellen Kooijman’s Female Minifigure set, featuring 3 scientists, now entitled “Research Institute” as our next LEGO Ideas set,” LEGO said in an official statement. “This awesome model is an inspiring set that offers a lot for kids as well as adults.” 
 
 As Kooijman put it, LEGO typically features a “stereotypical representation” of women in their figures, and she set out to change that. 
 
 “As a female scientist I had noticed two things about the available LEGO sets: a skewed male/female minifigure ratio and a rather stereotypical representation of the available female figures,” Kooijman wrote in a post explaining her project. 
 
 “It seemed logical that I would suggest a small set of female minifigures in interesting professions to make our LEGO city communities more diverse,” she added. 
 
 Support for the project was slow at first, but thanks to a flurry of tweets, it skyrocketed from around 2,000 supporters to 10,000 in just about one week. 
 
 Despite comprising nearly half of the U.S. workforce, and 60 percent of bachelor degree recipients, women filled only 24 percent of Science Technology Engineering and Math jobs in 2009, according to the Department of Commerce. 
 
 It’s an acute problem with no easy solution. But many believe that one piece of the puzzle is broadening the dreams and visions of young girls. 
 
 In 2013, LEGO introduced a “scientist” mini-figure to its collection, and though she had no particular specialty, it was warmly received. 
 
 But LEGO’S 2011 attempt to explicitly appeal to girls was resoundingly panned. LEGO Friends seemed like a Barbie knockoff — replete with lots of pink, short skirts, hanging out at the pool and of course, some good old baking. Its critics called the toy sets condescending and stereotypical, or worse: sexist. 
 
 Earlier this year, a 7-year-old girl wrote to the company to complain that “all the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and had no jobs,” while the boys in LEGO toys “went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs.” 
 
 7yo Charlotte writes an adorable and strongly worded letter to LEGO regarding the lack of adventures for girls. pic.twitter.com/JblNKzCwJs — SocImages (@SocImages) January 28, 2014 
 
 
 
 Kooijman’s design is the first step in correcting this problem. 
 
 For this heightened awareness of the depiction of women in toys and the media, there are many decades of feminism to thank. 
 
 More recently, however, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, has made changing the depiction of women in stock images a big priority, along with — somewhat controversially — a campaign to reclaim the word “bossy” as a compliment, not a critique. 
 
 And startup GoldieBlox captivated the world with its truly ingenious ad recasting the Beastie Boys song “Girls” as a mini-feminist anthem to the backdrop of young girls building and breaking things. (The ad did get the company embroiled in a copyright infringement lawsuit with the band, though.) 
 
 “Girls, you think you know what you want,” they sing. “You like to buy us pink toys, and everything else is for boys.” 
 
 LEGO’s new “Research Institute” set is on track to be released in August 2014, the company said.
– Mathematician Katherine Johnson was one of the women of NASA depicted in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, and now she's about to get her own Lego figure. Per MIT News, Johnson and four other women involved with the space agency over the years—Margaret Hamilton (computer scientist), Mae Jemison (first African-American woman in space in 1992), Nancy Grace Roman (pioneering NASA female exec and astronomer), and Sally Ride (the first US woman in space in 1983)—are set to be part of Maia Weinstock's "Women of NASA" Lego prototype, which was chosen from the Lego ideas submission website to be made into an actual set. Concepts for potential sets can be posted on the site, and after the public votes (Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, got 10,000 votes for her idea), Lego then reviews eligible projects. Weinstock says she not only wanted to give a nod to the history of women in STEM, but also to "set an example" for both girls and boys that it isn't "strange or unusual" for there to be females working as astronauts, computer programmers, or any other science or technology expert. Lego says more details on Weinstock's set, including how much it will cost and its release date, should be out later this year or in early 2018. (Cambridge is offering a Lego professorship.)