Jessica Brillhart

Jessica Brillhart is an immersive director, writer, and theorist known for her pioneering techniques in virtual reality (VR) filmmaking. As Founder and Director of Vrai Pictures, she has worked with prestigious clients such as NASA, Bose, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence program, and the Montreal Canadiens in creating a range of highly recognized and awarded VR experiences.

Brillhart started her career as a filmmaker at Google's Creative Lab, later becoming the company's Principal Filmmaker for Virtual Reality. After nearly a decade at Google, Brillhart was appointed the Director of the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. She oversaw research for the Army Research Lab, the Office of Naval Research, and DARPA for three years, concentrating on visual asset optimization, attention-driven systems, and next-generation interface design.

Brillhart has led several award-winning experiences and platforms, including the immersive audio platform Traverse, for which she won SXSW’s Special Jury Prize for The Future of Experience. She has received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Advanced Imaging Society and was named one of MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35. Her Medium series "In the Blink of a Mind" is considered a pivotal resource for VR design theory.

A graduate of both New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and its Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Brillhart is a respected advisor, judge, and speaker. She writes about designing for spatial computing and its impact on society and culture through her Substack Newsletter, CONTEXT.