Michael Hawley
Innovation & Thought Leadership in High Technology
A truly brilliant, versatile and compelling speaker, Michael Hawley has a gift for bringing far-ranging material into practical focus for individual audiences. A true renaissance thinker, Hawley is one of those rare innovators who can express his passion and insight through science and technology, art and design, to industrialists and academics with fluency and flair. He directs the annual EG conference in Monterey (the-eg.com), widely hailed as the most inspired gathering of creative talents in the world; and he serves on several corporate boards, large and small.
Michael's industrial career began as a pioneer of digital systems at Lucasfilm, Bell Labs at Murray Hill, and IRCAM in Paris: he speaks with unparalleled authority on the global evolution of digital media and its business and societal implications.
A long-time faculty member at MIT’s Media Lab, Michael was founder and director of several significant and highly entrepreneurial research thrusts to develop a very broad array of game-changing technologies. He is equally at home in corporate board rooms, research labs, exotic cultures and far-off wildernesses. Some of his expeditionary research at MIT ranged as far as the summit of Everest, the glaciers of Greenland, dogsledding in Norway, plant biology in Hawaii and reef ecology in Indonesia, all of it instrumented in creative ways with inventive digital systems.
Michael is also a notable pianist: he won the Van Cliburn competition in 2002, and made his Boston Symphony Hall debut in 2003 and still concertizes several times each year. Articulate, quick, witty and deeply insightful, Michael is a very dynamic and compelling speaker. His musical programs are unforgettable and truly unique: they embody a fresh approach to the patterns of many corporate gatherings.
Accomplishments
Worked alongside the original team that wrote UNIX at Bell Labs.
Pioneer of digital cinema technology at LucasFilm.
Early faculty member at MIT's Media Lab: held the Alex W. Dreyfoos Professorship in Media Technology.
Worked intimately with Steve Jobs at the inception of NeXT
Expeditions — taking the newest technologies into the field to do leading-edge science and education.
Photographer — first to produce very large format fine-art prints, and early innovator of digital photo systems
His book on Bhutan was named the World's Largest Published Book by Guinness World Records.
Credentials
- Director, EG Conference (the-eg.com)
- Founder, President, Friendly Planet
- Former Director, Special Projects, MIT
- Founder, MIT’s "Go Expeditions" program
- Founder, Director: Toys of Tomorrow, MIT; Counter Intelligence, MIT
- Co-founder and director, Things That Think, MIT Media Lab
- First-prize winner, Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs
- Former Dreyfoos Professor, Media Technology, MIT
- Board of Directors: Kodak, Color Kinetics, Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, TTI Vanguard, SiOnyx
- Fellow and trustee, Jonathan Edwards College at Yale
- Ph.D., MIT, and two undergraduate degrees from Yale
- One-time Duncan Yo-Yo champion
- Former luge racer
- Member, United States Bobsled Federation
- Recipient, first Jack Kilby Award for innovation in science, 1990
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