Jessica Baron is a Ph.D. candidate in Visual Computing at Clemson University based in Charleston. She has extensive experience through internships and travel. Her professional internships include development on Unreal Engine at Epic Games, RenderMan at Pixar Animation Studios, and a procedural-feather tool at Weta Digital. Her Ph.D. focus is material modeling, particularly on capturing the intricate appearance of bird and dinosaur feathers. This is an excuse to look at a lot of shiny things like Eurasian Magpie feathers. She is fascinated by the applications of computer graphics for further understanding the real world, combining efforts from other disciplines, and expressing creativity. Through internships, scholarships like Fulbright, and conferences, she has spent significant time in Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Canada, and more. She has a Great Pyrenees named Fresnel who is as large as herself, also a world-traveler, and a source of inspiration and cuddles.