Marina Umaschi Bers

Bers is the co-creator of the free ScratchJr programming language, used by 35 million children, and the creator of the KIBO robotic kit, which has no screens or keyboards.

[2] Marina Umaschi Bers went to Buenos Aires University in Argentina and received her undergraduate degree in Social Communications (1993).

[3] In 2001, Bers created her research group, the Developmental Technologies, or DevTech, at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University.

[15][16] Bers also works to train childhood educators on the use of technology in the classroom[17][18] and develops curriculum that can be used to teach programming and computational thinking.

[20] In 2005, Bers received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor given by the U.S. government to outstanding investigators.