Yasmin Kafai is professor of learning sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a researcher and developer of tools, communities, and materials to promote computational participation, crafting, and creativity across K-16. Her recent books include “Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming” and the forthcoming “Connected Gaming: What Making Videogames Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy,” (both with Quinn Burke), “Connected Play: Tweens in a Virtual Worlds,” (with Deborah Fields), and editions such as “Textile Messages: Dispatches from the World of Electronic Textiles and Education” and “Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming.”

Kafai earned a doctorate in education from Harvard University while working with Seymour Papert at the MIT Media Lab. She is an elected fellow of the American Educational Research Association and past president of the International Society for the Learning Sciences.