Emily Temple-Wood


Emily Temple-Wood (born May 24, 1994)[1] is an American physician and Wikipedia editor who goes by the name of Keilana on the site. She is known for her efforts to counter the effects and causes of gender bias on Wikipedia, particularly through the creation of articles about women in science. She was declared a joint recipient of the 2016 Wikipedian of the Year award, by Jimmy Wales, at Wikimania on June 24, 2016. Temple-Wood graduated from Loyola University Chicago and Midwestern University. She practices medicine in Chicago.

Temple-Wood attended Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, Illinois.[3] A 2017 Wired article described her as "the type of middle schooler who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, because she thought the idea of making children swear a loyalty oath was bizarre."[4] She won the 2008 DuPage County Spelling Bee.[5] This victory led to her participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee the same year,[6] where she lasted until the quarterfinals[7][8] and finished in 46th place. Following the competition, in June 2008 she was honored by the then-lieutenant governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, along with the other regional spelling bee champions.[9] She went on to attend Downers Grove North High School, where she was a member of the speech team. This team won four medals, one of which was for first place, at the 2011 Illinois High School Association state meet in Peoria.[10] As a senior, she was named to the "top two percent" in 2012.[11]

In May 2016, she graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in molecular biology and Arabic and Islamic studies. She began medical school at Chicago's Midwestern University in the fall of 2016.[12][13]Since 2020, she is a medical school graduate[14] and a practicing physician in Chicago.[15][2]

Temple-Wood received national press coverage for creating Wikipedia articles about women scientists, as well as her activism to increase their representation on Wikipedia. She made her first edit to Wikipedia in 2005, at the age of 10.[16] She first started contributing to the site when she was 12,[17] and it was when she was 12 that she was first harassed online as a result of her Wikipedia contributions.[18] She began her efforts in regards to women scientists when she was in middle school.[19] In 2007, she became an administrator on Wikipedia[20] and served on the Arbitration Committee from 2016 to 2017. She co-founded Wikipedia's WikiProject Women Scientists in 2012;[21] since then, she has written hundreds of Wikipedia pages about female scientists.[22] Editing under the username "Keilana",[23] she began creating such articles when she noticed that few women who were members of the Royal Society had Wikipedia articles. She told the Wikimedia Foundation that when she first noticed this, she "got pissed and wrote an article that night. I literally sat in the hallway in the dorm until 2 a.m. writing [my] first women in science article."[24][25] The article she is the most proud of is that on Rosalyn Scott, the first African-American woman to become a thoracic surgeon.[26]