By Tamara Shiloh

Dasia Taylor’s journey began as a young girl in high school in her AP chemistry class. Her teacher at Iowa City’s West High School had just asked which students wanted to try out for the school’s science fair team. Taylor volunteered.

At the time, Taylor was a high-school junior focusing on the humanities.

She was already overcommitted as a member of the student senate, her district’s diversity and equity committee, and an array of other “anti-racism initiatives.” Her family had no history of participating in science fairs – and no desire to attend one, as she wasn’t really into science. However, Taylor says her life and decisions are guided by a simple rule: “Be curious.”

With cash prizes in the four-digit range and competitors polishing concepts and techniques since grade-school, today’s science fair projects are much more advanced than the simple papier-mâché volcanoes we used to see.

Taylor says her chances of entering the science far, let alone winning, were slim to none.

However, she won her next competition, then the one after that. Finally, she ended up in the last stage of the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Super Bowl of high school science competitions. And the publicity resulting from her unlikely story and potentially world-changing proposal made Taylor a viral sensation, putting the bubbly 17-year-old on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’, ‘PBS NewsHour’, CNN, and many other shows.

In fact, equity work was the inspiration for Taylor’s science ideas. Her medical suture, which colors beet juice to reveal an infected surgical wound, is based on research that shows that Black individuals are particularly vulnerable to post-surgical complications such as infection – and that what appears on some patients’ skin as simple signs of infection, like a red patch and swelling, doesn’t show up on darker skin.

Taylor’s suture concept, which she is trying to patent, could provide a simple low-cost fix in poor countries where infections that can easily be treated are often fatal.

Two years after her forum-moments virilization, at 19, Taylor is a college student, but also the founder and CEO of VariegateHealth, creating inclusive medical devices; and the owner of her own “head nerd brand.”

“My life’s work is helping kids embrace their inner nerd and just be their authentic selves,” Taylor says.

Through “hands-on innovation workshops,” she inspires teenagers to make science bolder. By bolder, Taylor says she means more exciting and socially meaningful.

By the time the debate wrapped up, Taylor had been chosen for the 2023 Iowa’s Woman of the Year prize by USA Today, which annually showcases creative leaders with “stories that influence their communities.”

She was featured in the collection “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women,” which is part of the Rebel Girls series.

Through her innovative work and advocacy for STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) programs, Taylor is proving that it’s possible for students to be curious about the issues that affect their lives, engage in learning experiences not just in the classroom but beyond, and change the world.

With this constant motivation and her focus on improving the lives of others, she has become a public speaker, and a role model for the millennial generation worldwide.

Taylor says she has a penchant for the color yellow, music and creating any rule she wants.

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