November 2022 Archive

Lydia Denton, from Wilson, North Carolina is our “Women in STEM” keynote speaker for November, 2022. She was featured in The 74’s 16 Under 16: Meet the 74’s 2022 Class of STEM Achievers. 

Lydia Denton is a teen inventor whose personal challenges inspire her creations. She’s on a mission to get girls interested in STEM.

Lydia has life-threatening allergies and suffers from severe anxiety, which causes her hair and nails to fall out. “So much of her life feels out of her control, but instead of letting these things overwhelm her or define her, she uses them as fuel for inventions,” said her nominator and mother, Covey Denton, K-8 STEM specialty teacher at Sallie B Howard School in Wilson.

As just one example, Lydia created what she calls a “Halcyon Bracelet” to help with body-focused repetitive behaviors, which plagued her during the COVID quarantine. The bracelet recognizes recurrent movements associated with anxiety, and delivers a warning signal when it detects the user is about to revert into those actions. She has also invented a “Beat the Heat Car Seat” that can tell when a child has been left in a car, and initiates a call to emergency services for rescue if the temperature in the vehicle becomes dangerously hot.

The teen also works to reduce e-waste, and co-founded Regame Inc., a nonprofit that collects, repairs and redistributes used gaming systems and tablets to keep them from piling up in landfills. She continues to speak to school groups and programs for girls to drum up more female interest and representation in STEM.