Two U. of I. engineers make a doll, Miss Possible

Two engineering students from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, developed a doll modeled after Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and are now developing a marketing campaign to bring it to girls everywhere.

The doll follows a rapidly growing trend of using toys and games, for which the two U of I engineering students and their team employ an app, to encourage girls to pursue lives not as brides or fairy princesses, but as scientists and engineers.

“We strive to increase the number of people who change the world,” Janna Eaves, the company’s cofounder and CTO, says on their promotional video, “by empowering girls to dream big and achieve.”

Before Ms Eaves and the company’s cofounder, Supriya Hobbs, can take the first of their Miss Possible dolls to market, they’ll need some capital. This doll is the first of an anticipated series that will include aviators, programmers, etc. They’re well on their way to clearing the first hurdle, thanks to crowd-funding on Indiegogo.

Just last week, Lego® unveiled its female scientist series, which has young girls playing with paleontologists and joining “Entrepreneur Barbie,” which is a far cry from the edition a few decades back who complained, “Math class is tough!” The female scientist series and Entrepreneur Barbie are flying off the shelves.

“Role models make a BIG difference in girls’ career choices,” the Miss Possible team writes on their website. “Miss Possible makes sure all girls have access to strong, successful female role models by showing girls real women who did great things.

“We take incredible women and dial them back to age 10 before turning them into dolls. This helps girls see that, even though their role model achieved amazing things, she was once a little girl too.”