Bruce Blumberg is Assistant Professor in the MIT Program of Media Arts and Sciences, Head of the Synthetic Characters Group and Asahi Broadcasting Corporation Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences. Using animals such as dogs as his model, his research goal is to build animated characters that possess the same type of everyday common sense, empathy, and ability to learn that one finds in animals such as dogs. His group has had a number of prominent installations such as SWAMPED!, void*: A Cast of Characters, sheep|dog: Trial By Eire, and, this summer, Alpha Wolf, which will be part of the Emerging Technology venue of Siggraph 2001 in Los Angeles. Prior to the Media Lab, he held positions with Apple computer and with NeXT Inc., where he was the first employee hired by the founders. Blumberg holds a B.A. in economics from Amherst (1977), an S.M. in management (1981) from MIT Sloan School of Management and a Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences (1996), from the MIT Media Laboratory.