2016-06-15: Autonomy Incubator Social Media Team Member Anicca Harriot Makes STEM #relatable

the hardest part of working at NASA is honestly holding in all of my space puns

— Anicca (@13adh13) June 15, 2016

A member of the Autonomy Incubator (Ai) social media triumvirate, Anicca Harriot comes to the Ai with a narrowly-focused specialty: short-form content. While I (Abigail) run the blog and Kastan creates the videos, Anicca is the powerhouse behind our Twitter and Instagram presences.

Anicca multitasks at her desk.

Anicca is, quite frankly, the coolest person in the lab. (Except you, Danette.) She's majoring in biophysical sciences with a minor in business communications at Regent University and a member of NASA Social (an initiative that recruits members of the public as NASA media correspondents). She spent last summer creating and running a popular Instagram account of volunteer's tongues for the Smithsonian's Genome Exhibit.

I have a really weird job...

A photo posted by Anicca (@13adh13) on Jun 29, 2014 at 3:23pm PDT

Because of her primary interest in biology, Anicca works remotely for the Ai and spends most of her week at her internship in the Physiological Sciences lab at Eastern Virginia Medical School. She comes in every Tuesday to check in and gather/generate content, then tweets from her personal account about what we're doing for the rest of the week. The official Ai account can then retweet her content, effectively hitting two different audiences with the same message.

 With a schedule as busy as hers, one has to wonder: why volunteer for the Ai?

"I don't think there are enough younger people visible in science," she said. After learning about the Ai through an event she covered with NASA Social, she "immediately wanted to get involved" and use her platform as a young woman in STEM to connect her generation with the innovative research at the Ai.

"If you walk up to a young person and ask them what they used most recently on the Web," she explained, "it's not going to be the Women In STEM website. It's going to be Twitter or social media."

increases the visibility of the diverse representation of women, poc, and age groups of people working and making a difference in STEM

— Anicca (@13adh13) June 15, 2016

Anicca intends to pursue opportunities to integrate her passion for youth outreach with her love for science well into the future, and plans to keep using social media as her method of choice.