 My name is Lila Iyer and I'm a first year engineer at Purdue University and I wrote Ellara STEM Girl to inspire more girls to take interest in STEM. My name's Ellara and in case you didn't know, that's the name of a moon of Jupiter. I really wanted her name to be something unique and space related because astronomy has always been one of my biggest passions and I also wanted her name to be kind of racially ambiguous because I know some names can be associated with a different race and I wanted her to be able to relate to everybody. Sally Ride. Has anybody heard her name? There's like four main factors that lead into why girls lose interest in STEM as they grow up. Being a minority, fear of failure, stereotypes and lack of role models. So those are the four topics that I really wanted to address in my book in more of a playful manner so girls were exposed to them but they could also were given a way that they could overcome them in the way that Ellara does.