Magnetic Appeal with Ayah Bdeir by Maha Majzoub @ayahbdeir > @oasismag 's Gossip Issue

I have a girl crush on Ayah Bdeir. There are several reasons that led me to this conclusion. Some of them require no explanation really – like her being pretty easy on the eye. Ayah Bdeir also makes science and technology look so hot. Anyone who remotely knows me is well aware that science and technology is not my turf – not in this life and not in the next one. 

Let’s just put it that way: My two-year-old niece is more comfortable around an iPad than me. But when Ayah Bdeir talks modules and circuit boards, I listen. In frankness, I don’t always follow, as the tech jargon may sometimes get too complicated for my taste, but I really make an effort. Moreover, I’ve also always felt weak at the knees for highly intellectual overachievers, and Ayah Bdeir certainly falls under that classification.

For those of you who don’t know her, Ayah Bdeir is the Lebanese- Canadian engineer and interactive artist best known for creating littleBits, a system of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnets for prototyping and play. She is probably lesser known as being one of the instigators of the open source hardware movement in a bid to make education and innovation more accessible to people across the world. This, in fact, is but one of the many objectives of littleBits, the first prototype of which Bdeir unveiled in 2008 while she was senior fellow at the Eyebeam Art+ Technology Center in New York. And after three years of diligent work and development, Bdeir created and sold the first kit of littleBits, now a New York-based company which she spearheads – and one that is growing at breakneck speed. Having recently secured $3.65 million in a Series A round funding, littleBits walked away with the Popular Science’s “Best of Toy Fair 2012″ while the Museum of Modern Arts (MOMA) acquired a littleBits circuit as part of their permanent collection.

Yes, 2012 has been very kind to Bdeir – she was named a TED Fellow that year as one of 25 innovators from around the world, delivering a talk at TED2012 in California about her work and the future of play, and she was subsequently awarded a TED2013 senior fellowship.

www.ayahbdeir.com
www.littleBits.cc