Sharrieff, Snell & Skinner were high school students from the District of Columbia. In 2018, they made headlines for being finalists in NASA’s prestigious Optimus Prime Spinoff Challenge with their innovative solution to the global water crisis. The team, which consisted of students from Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, McKinley Technology High School, and Woodrow Wilson High School, developed a water filtration system inspired by NASA’s Mars rovers. Their invention utilized a process called flocculation to remove impurities from water, making it safe for consumption.
The Mayor of Washington D.C., Muriel E. Bowser, pledged to award $4,000 to help the three who were subjected to racist bullying online in an attempt to prevent them from winning NASA’s prestigious high school competition. The Washington Post reported that the teenagers, Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner, and Bria Snell, had developed a water purification system to address lead-contaminated water in school drinking fountains. Their project was the only one by an all-black, female team to make it to the finals of NASA’s competition.
The teenagers had to deal with racist attacks on social media, including users on the anonymous internet forum 4chan, who used racial epithets and argued that the students’ project did not deserve to be a finalist. They also suggested computer programs that would hack the voting system to give a team of teenage boys a boost. This prompted NASA to shut down public voting earlier than expected, and in a statement, the space agency noted that “some members of the public used social media, not to encourage students … but to attack a particular student team based on their race and encourage others to disrupt the contest and manipulate the vote.”
Despite this, the teenagers gained traction on social media and attracted positive attention from classmates, the D.C. community, and even strangers on social media. They were supported by prominent black activists and organizations who saw the competition as an opportunity to highlight the underrepresentation of black women in science. Sharrieff, Snell, and Skinner said they were excited about the positive attention their project had received, and they hope to be role models for younger generations interested in pursuing STEM-related careers.
Their water purification system was developed at the Inclusive Innovation Incubator, a technology lab focused on diversity and entrepreneurship near Howard University, where they volunteer. Their mentor at the incubator encouraged them to compete, and on weekends, supervised them as they built a prototype based on Nasa technology used to develop automatic pool purifiers. The teenagers tested their system using meters to ensure the water was clean and even drank it themselves to demonstrate their confidence in its effectiveness.
Skinner shared her career aspirations with the Washington Post, saying that she wants to be a paediatric surgeon, Sharrieff aims to be a biomedical engineer, and Snell hopes to be an anesthesiologist. They hope that their success in the NASA competition will inspire more young people, especially girls of colour, to pursue STEM-related careers. As Skinner noted, “The popular norm is sports and modeling and advertising, and for people to see our faces and see we’re just regular girls and we want to be scientists.”
