Courtesy of Michael Hawley
Curiosity Expert: Michael Hawley
Director of Special Projects and Founder of MIT's GO Expeditions Program
Hawley was born in November 1961 and grew up in New Providence, NJ, a suburb of New York City. He graduated from New Providence High School in 1979. As a teenager he had a job at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, New Jersey), working in the linguistics department. He did his undergraduate work at Yale University in the areas of music and computer science; he went on to do his doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the early 90's, while working at NeXT, he was key in the development of the world's first digital library, creating digital versions of Shakespeare and other classics. From 1993-2002, he was on the faculty at MIT as the Dreyfoos chair, and from there he became Director of Special Projects at MIT's Media Laboratory. His work and research have spanned the topics of psychology, computer music, digital video editing, human-computer interfaces, documentary photography, and more.
Hawley is also a pianist and organist. He won the Van Cliburn Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in 2002. His teachers have included Earl Wild and Ward Davenny, and he has performed solo recitals, chamber concerts and appeared as soloist with major orchestras. Notably, his competition pieces included his own piano arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. He also accompanied cellist Yo-Yo Ma in performing the wedding march at the marriage of TV host and scientist Bill Nye and musician and author Blair Tindall at Richard Saul Wurman's 2006 The Entertainment Gathering convention. He was prominently featured in the 2010 documentary Bach & Friends.
Hawley directs the EG Conference held annually in Monterey, California.
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