Jasmine Florentine is a mechanical design engineer, children’s author-illustrator, and maker. Her mission is to combine art, storytelling, and technology to design creative learning experiences to engage kids with STEM.
She received an MS and a BS from MIT in mechanical engineering, where she focused on product design. Before moving abroad, she worked as both a mechanical engineer and visual artist for FIRST—a non-profit that runs robotics competitions for students. This sparked her love of robots and using them to engage kids with STEM. This in turn led her to explore how she could combine common household materials like paper and cardboard with the simple electronics like the micro:bit to create simple robots. She especially loves gear-based mechanisms, which is why she fell in love with Paper Mech.
Jasmine is passionate about using stories and games to engage kids with STEM. She has co-written a STEM live-action roleplaying game as part of a research initiative to engage preteen girls with coding, has written a middle-grade STEM-themed novel (Hex Allen and the Clanksmiths, 2022) and is working on an upcoming STEM-themed graphic novel.