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Marta Tienda, the Maurice P. During '22 Professor in Demographic Studies and Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, is a featured social scientist profiled in a new, innovative and highly interactive National Academy of Sciences (NAS) web site, iWASwondering.org.

The web site is a project of the NAS intended to showcase the accomplishments of contemporary women in science, and to highlight for young people the varied and intriguing careers of some of today's most prominent scientists. The site draws from and accompanies the publication of a ten-volume series of biographies titled Women's Adventures in Science, co-published by the Joseph Henry Press (an imprint of the National Academies Press) and Scholastic Library Publishing. Tienda's biography as a part of the series is called People Person: The Story of Sociologist Marta Tienda, by Diane O'Connell.

Tienda's web site features an interactive comic strip and scrapbook detailing the story of her life, starting from when she was a child and spent two summers as a migrant laborer picking tomatoes with her family, through to her career as a Princeton sociologist. Tienda's page also features interviews, helpful background information about her field of research, and a "science lab" that provides site visitors tools, information, and downloads allowing visitors to conduct their own social science investigations.

Tienda's profile is one of ten stories in the new Women's Adventures in Science biography series written for middle school-aged students. Tienda draws upon her experience to explore why some ethnic and racial groups have a harder time than others in moving up the economic ladder. She is the only social scientist profiled.

Each of the women featured in the series, including wildlife biologist Amy Vedder and physicist Shirley Ann Jackson, participated in her book's creation by sharing important details about her life, providing personal photographs to help illustrate the story, making family, friends, and colleagues available for interviews, and explaining her scientific specialty in ways that will inform and engage young readers.

The National Academy of Sciences is an honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. The NAS was signed into being by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863, at the height of the Civil War. As mandated in its Act of Incorporation, the NAS has, since 1863, served to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art" whenever called upon to do so by any department of the U.S. government.