Armenian Girls Winning in STEM
On November 8, the 2025 final pitch competition of the FEMINNO “STEM Acceleration Award” program was held at the American University of Armenia, with over 180 girls from all regions of Armenia participating. During the three-month summer program, girls in grades 7-12 conceived, developed, and implemented STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) projects, which competed to be recognized as the best and receive awards.
More than 300 girls from all regions of Armenia applied for participation in the program, of which 200 passed the competition. Wanting to develop skills such as working in an unfamiliar environment and building team relationships among the participants, 20 teams were formed from the girls who passed the competition, with a mixed regional distribution, each with 10 participants.
The motto of the “STEM Acceleration Award” program is “Armenia needs more girls in STEM”, and noting the huge impact of the program on the growth and development of interests of school-age girls, FEMINNO has made it an annual event. This year, the competitive nature of the project allowed to encourage competition among the participants and, based on this, the desire to achieve results by investing greater efforts. And about 50 of the best participants from last year were selected as program officers and mentor assistants to assume greater responsibility and the role of team leaders.
“We are delighted to see the obvious results of the program – the growth that is especially visible from the start of the program to the end, and especially when we compare the incomparably large difference between the girls who participated last year in how confident they are, how courageous they are, and how much better they imagine the STEM fields. We don’t expect that all the participants will be engaged in science in the future, but this competition has definitely changed a lot in their perceptionof education and learning. I have no doubt that one day we will be truly proud of the achievements of many of these girls,” says Seda Papoyan, the founder of FEMINNO and initiator of the project.
The organizers made sure that there were no losers in the competition. According to the assessment of the professional jury, 5 teams were recognized as winners, who were awarded the “the best of best” nomination and technological gifts, and special incentive nominations with corresponding gifts were prepared for the others. One of the winning teams’ research was on the harm of headphones, another group created a podcast series using artificial intelligence with the participation of famous female scientists in history, another group made cosmetics exclusively with natural dyes and ingredients, a groupr created a system to establish a cyber-safe environment for teenagers with the help of artificial intelligence, and the last “best of best” group designed a program and guide for effective plant growth, for example, how music, light, environment and other factors affect it.
The implementation of the “STEM Acceleration Award” program was supported by the US-based Henry Luce and Thrive Armenia foundations. The FEMINNO team plans to maintain the annual nature of the program and involve a larger number of girls. “This obvious growth and results oblige us to continue the program and prove that the future of science in Armenia is also in the hands of girls,” said Papoyan.
