"The Big Bang Theory" star Mayim Bialik, who plays the quirky but brilliant neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler in the popular CBS sitcom has just tied up with Texas Instruments in order to promote the back-to-school campaign called the #ilyTIcontest, where they're encouraging students to embrace their love of education and all things technology.
"Our back to school campaign this year is the ilyTI campaign," Bialk told Bustle via a phone interview. "We're asking students and teachers to submit positive images of themselves showing why and how they love and use their TI technology."
Texas Instruments is well-known for their calculators, and Bialik considers the contest a great and meaningful way for young girls to change the stigmas that come with school and technology.
"I've been working with Texas Instruments, gosh, for over three years now. I do a lot of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) advocacy and so I really enjoy working with them and trying to put a positive face and a female face on science and technology and engineering and math," she said.
Bialik has a doctorate in neuroscience herself from the University of California, and she is glad that more and more people are now more confident of showing their nerdy sides.
"There's not a way to make things, for example 'cool' if nobody thinks that they are, right? I think what we're seeing is that, fortunately, more and more young people are unafraid to embrace their inner geek or their inner nerd or to be honest about what moves them as students. Obviously, that's what this campaign is sort of trying to capitalize on," she said.
It can get pretty lonely feeling passionate about things that other people are not really enthusiastic about, said Bialik, but the actress assured like-minded individuals that things will only get better in the end.
"But, you know, I think that there are a lot of us who are really into school or into subjects that most people aren't into, it can feel kind of lonely. There are ways that it does get better. As you get older, it gets better. When you meet more people like you, it gets better. One of the important things about the work I've done with Texas Instruments is to try and encourage young people to learn about other sides of science and technology and math that they may not have thought of before, so there's less of that stigma," she said.
