Jessica Hammer has always been a creator.
In fact, she was only eight years old when she started designing her own games, which led to games for all of her friends' birthday parties, too. And now, as a Mellon Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Fellow at Columbia University, Jessica fosters that same creativity by designing a wide range of video games and researching, teaching and writing about the different ways video games affect the world in which we live and the people who play them.
Jessica nurtured an intense interest in the science of gaming while majoring in computer science at Harvard. As her questions and ideas increased, so did the notion that they could lead toward a career. Now, as a graduate researcher, Jessica is still asking questions. And that curiosity, along with persistence and courage, are the traits she believes allowed her combine scholarship, research and design into a career she loves.