Jessica Hammer, Ph.D. to Speak at 2018 Commencement

Award-winning game designer Jessica Hammer, Ph.D. will be the featured speaker at The Ellis School’s Commencement Ceremony on Thursday, June 7, at 7:00 p.m. in the Ellis Courtyard. The ceremony will celebrate the School’s graduating Class of 2018 and their many contributions, achievements, and accomplishments as Ellis students and young women.
An assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who is jointly appointed in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and the Entertainment Technology Center, Jessica fuses game design with qualitative and quantitative research techniques to understand how games influence human behavior. With an emphasis on prototyping, playtesting, and iteration, Jessica employs research-backed methods as part of the game design process to encourage risk-taking, creativity, and improvisation in her classroom. Her work has been supported by funders including the Heinz Foundation, the Okawa Foundation, Google, Amazon, Oath, and internal Carnegie Mellon awards.

Her live-action role-playing game, Rosenstrasse, received an Official Selection at IndieCade, the international independent game festival, in 2017, and her collaborative game, Outbreak, won a Meaningful Play Player’s Choice award in 2016. Jessica was also recently awarded the 2018 Teaching Innovation award by Carnegie Mellon at the university’s Celebration of Education awards. The honor recognized Jessia’s outstanding contributions as a distinguished faculty member and applauded her innovative approaches to teaching.

A member of the American Educational Research Association, the International Game Developers Association, and Women in Technology International, Jessica joined Carnegie Mellon in 2014. She has her Ph.D. in cognitive studies from Columbia University, a master’s degree in interactive technologies from New York University, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard University.
 
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