Emily Temple-Wood
Emily Temple-Wood (born May 24, 1994) is an American physician and Wikipedia editor, who goes by pseudonym 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.
Also recorded as Keilana
Emily Temple-Wood
- Name
- Emily Temple-Wood
- Born
- 24 May 1994
- Birthplace
- Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
- Occupation
- * Physician
- Education
- * Loyola University Chicago (BS)
- Known for
- Creating Wikipedia articles about women scientists
- Awards
- Wikipedian of the Year (2016)
- Nationality
- United States
- Honours
- Wikimedian of the Year
- Languages
- English · Arabic · French
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Documentary summary
Emily Temple-Wood (born May 24, 1994) is an American physician and Wikipedia editor, who goes by pseudonym 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.
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Note VALÉORINE
Emily Temple-Wood (born 1994) is an American biographer, physician and wikimedian in residence, among other activities. The biographer was born in Chicago.
Emily Temple-Wood studied at Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, Loyola University Chicago and Midwestern University, among others. The biographer worked for National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Languages used include Arabic, English and French. Emily Temple-Wood received Wikimedian of the Year.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 01 October 2026
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In this article
Biography
Biography
Temple-Wood graduated from Loyola University Chicago and Midwestern University. She practices medicine in Minnesota.
Emily Temple-Wood studied at Loyola University Chicago, The Avery Coonley School and Midwestern University. The recorded working language is English, Arabic and French. Employment is recorded with National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Distinctions recorded are Wikimedian of the Year.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Emily Temple-Wood • Other Names — Keilana • Born — 24 May 1994 • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois, U.S. • Occupation — * Physician • Wikipedian • Education — * Loyola University Chicago (BS) • Midwestern University (DO) • Known for — Creating Wikipedia articles about women scientists • Awards — Wikipedian of the Year (2016)
Early life and education
Early life and education
Temple-Wood attended Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, Illinois. 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." She won the 2008 DuPage County Spelling Bee. This victory led to her participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee the same year, where she lasted until the quarterfinals 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. 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. As a senior, she was named to the "top two percent" in 2012. 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. Since 2020, she is a medical school graduate and was a practicing physician in Chicago. She later became a practicing physician in Montevideo, Minnesota.
Work on Wikipedia
Work on Wikipedia
• Illustration — Video of Temple-Wood expressing why she thinks more women should edit, and be represented on, Wikipedia 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. She first started contributing to the site when she was 12, and it was when she was 12 that she was first harassed online as a result of her Wikipedia contributions. She began her efforts in regards to women scientists when she was in middle school. In 2007, she became an administrator on Wikipedia and served on the Arbitration Committee from 2016 to 2017. She co-founded Wikipedia's WikiProject Women Scientists in 2012; since then, she has written hundreds of Wikipedia pages about female scientists. Editing under the username "Keilana", 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." The article she is the most proud of is that on Rosalyn Scott, the first African-American woman to become a thoracic surgeon. • Illustration — Interview with Temple-Wood in 2013 by Wikimedia Deutschland Temple-Wood has also organized edit-a-thons at museums and libraries with the aim of increasing the representation of women scientists on Wikipedia. In October 2015, she told The Atlantic that she had identified 4,400 women scientists who did not have Wikipedia articles written about them even though each of them was notable enough to be covered by one. In March 2016, she gained international media attention because of her approach to the online sexual harassment she had received: for every such email she received, she plans to create a Wikipedia article about a woman scientist. That month, she told BuzzFeed News that with respect to her doing this, "My motivation is to channel the frustration I feel from being harassed into something productive." In May 2016, she told The Fader: "As a Wikipedian, my natural response to seeing a gap in coverage is to start a project, so that's what I did with the Women Scientists project. The narrative of history has been dominated by men, and making sure that women's biographies are included in Wikipedia can be our way of writing women back into that narrative." Her work led to her being named as joint Wikipedian of the Year in 2016, along with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight.
Positions
Positions
Temple-Wood is a member of the board of directors of Wikimedia DC, the District of Columbia-area chapter of the Wikimedia movement. She is also a board member of the Wiki Project Med Foundation, and has served as Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
The Keilana effect
The Keilana effect
• Illustration — Inflection point in women scientists articles' quality, together with Temple-Wood's impulsed community efforts The paper "Interpolating Quality Dynamics in Wikipedia and Demonstrating the Keilana Effect", about a phenomenon named after Temple-Wood's work, was presented by Aaron Halfaker at OpenSym '17, the International Symposium on Open Collaboration. This study finds an inflection point in term of articles' quality for women scientists around late 2012, when Temple-Wood impulsed a community effort on that matter.
Personal life
Personal life
Temple-Wood self-describes herself as queer. In October 2020, on National Coming Out Day, she wrote on Twitter that she was "proud to be a queer physician." She is married and lives with her husband and two cats.
Works
Works
* * * • Reprinted in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017. Jahren, Hope, editor. Boston.. OCLC 1004672002. * * *
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Twitter. Emily (User:Keilana).
- 2.Wamble, Michael. Three Kids Outwit, Outlast and Outspell Opponents. Daily Herald. February 23, 2006.
- 3.McMillen, Andrew. One Woman's Brilliant "Fuck You" to Wikipedia Trolls. WIRED. 2017-02-06.
- 4.McKendrick, Eva. 13-year-old going to National Spelling Bee. Naperville Sun. March 4, 2008.
- 5.Could You Use it in a Sentence, Please?. ABC 7. May 28, 2008.
- 6.Mathie, Frank. 8th-grade spellers represent Chicago area. ABC 7. June 2, 2008.
- 7.(May 30, 2008). National Spelling Bee (Image) , Houston Chronicle ("Emily Temple-Wood, 14, of Downers Grove, Ill., celebrates making it through the second round.")
- 8.Avery Coonley Students Honored by Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn. Avery Coonley School. September 22, 2008.
- 9.District 99. Speech Team at North High School in Downers Grove Places Eighth, Receives Four State Medals. TribLocal. Chicago Tribune. February 23, 2011.
- 10.Sersland, Melissa. 10 Seniors Named to Downers Grove North's Top Two Percent. Patch.com. May 4, 2012.
- 11.Avenant, Michelle. Wikipedian writes woman scientist's biography whenever she is harassed. ITWeb. March 30, 2016.
- 12.Sayo, Charlene. Emily Temple-Wood: 'If her name survived this long, that's a huge indicator of her importance.'. Rabble.ca. May 26, 2016.
- 13.Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine 2020 Commencement. Midwestern University. 9. May 22, 2020.
- 14.Ladyzhets, Betsy. Doctors respond to 20 common concerns about the flu shot. Richmond Times-Dispatch. Associated Press. November 14, 2020.
- 15.Singer, Jenny. The Women of Wikipedia Are Writing Themselves Into History. Yahoo.com Dead link. March 2026.
- 16.Emily Temple-Wood, DO. CCM Health.
- 17.Hussain, Netha. Countering the Systemic Bias on Wikipedia: An Interview With Emily Temple-Wood. The Huffington Post. January 4, 2014.
- 18.Sanghani, Radhika. Student praised for tackling 'sexist Wikipedia' by creating page for female scientist every time she's trolled. The Daily Telegraph. March 14, 2016.
- 19.Simmons, Andy. This Victim of Cyber-Bullying Is Confronting Misogynists in the Coolest Way. Reader's Digest. January 3, 2017.
- 20.Huang, Keira. Wikipedia fails to bridge gender gap. South China Morning Post. August 11, 2013.
- 21.Vitulli, Marie A. Writing Women in Mathematics into Wikipedia. 2017-10-30.
- 22.Akst, Jef. Student Fights Harassment with Wikipedia. The Scientist. March 10, 2016.
- 23.Lee, Newton. Google It: Total Information Awareness. Springer. 87. 2016. 978-1-4939-6415-4.
- 24.Sherriff, Lucy. Student Emily Temple-Wood Writes A New 'Women In Science' Wikipedia Entry Every Time She's Harassed. The Huffington Post. March 14, 2016.
- 25.Lutkin, Aimee. A Biologist Is Writing a Wikipedia Article About a Woman Scientist For Every Harassing Email She Gets. Jezebel. March 10, 2016.
- 26.Chang, Rita. Emily Temple-Wood: A cool Wikipedian on a big mission. Blog.wikimedia.org. October 11, 2013.
- 27.BBC. Female scientist fights harassment with Wikipedia. March 14, 2016.
- 28.Cohen, Noam. Warming Up to the Culture of Wikipedia. The New York Times. March 19, 2014.
- 29.Paling, Emma. Wikipedia's Hostility to Women. The Atlantic. October 21, 2015.
- 30.Gibson, Caitlin. How one young female scientist decided to cope with online harassment. The Washington Post. March 11, 2016.
- 31.Mosbergen, Dominique. For Every Sexist Email She Gets, This College Student Will Pen a Wikipedia Entry About a Woman Scientist. The Huffington Post. March 10, 2016.
- 32.El Asri, Lucía. Esta 'wikipedista' está poniendo a las científicas en el lugar que se merecen. eldiario.es. March 9, 2016.
- 33.Winkel, Sarah. Pour chaque mail sexiste reçu, elle crée la page Wikipédia d'une scientifique. 7sur7. Persgroep Digital. March 10, 2016.
- 34.Oakes, Kelly. This Student Adds A Woman In Science To Wikipedia Every Time She's Harassed Online. BuzzFeed. March 10, 2016.
- 35.Cliff, Aimee. These Innovators Are Making Tech Better For Everyone. The Fader. May 26, 2016.
- 36.Jimmy Wales names Emily Temple-Wood and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight as Wikipedians of the Year. Wikimedia Foundation. June 24, 2016.
- 37.Board of Directors. Wikimedia DC.
- 38.Board members. Wiki Project Med Foundation.
- 39.Temple-Wood, Emily. A Wikipedian-in-Residence and the US government join forces to share knowledge on occupational safety and health. Wikimedia Blog. May 19, 2015.
- 40.Halfaker, Aaron. Interpolating Quality Dynamics in Wikipedia and Demonstrating the Keilana Effect. August 23–25, 2017.
- 41.The Royal Society of Chemistry. Improving gender balance on Wikipedia. www.rsc.org. 2017-08-18.
- 42.Temple-Wood, Emily. Happy #NationalComingOutDay!!! I'm proud to be a queer physician and it's the best feeling in the world to care for other members of my community. (Also tbt my dad's reaction when I came out: ".BI sexual? Okay, okay, do you wanna go to Lolla on Friday or Saturday?). 1315753178370060294. October 12, 2020.
- 43.About. Emily Temple Wood website.
- 44.Emily Temple Wood. Ms. Represent. May 26, 2016.
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