Mike Ananny
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Mike Ananny is a PhD student in Stanford University's Communication department where he researches technology-supported political communication. His emphasis is on the design and evaluation of methods and materials for people to consider their own public opinions and those of their communities as long-term developments.
Ananny holds a Bachelors of Science (Honours) from the University of Toronto where he double-majored in Computer Science and Human Biology. While an undergraduate, he was a founding member of Expresto Software, a company that developed movie-making software for young children to make multimedia stories. (The company was sold in August 2002.) He was also Nortel Networks' on-campus representative and acted as a liaison between Nortel's Human Resources department and the University of Toronto's Engineering and Computer Science schools. He then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory where he worked with the Gesture and Narrative Language and Tangible Media groups, designing and evaluating new technological toys to support the language development of very young children. Ananny has consulted with several toy design companies, helping to translate concepts and prototypes into new product lines.
After graduating with a Masters in Media Arts and Sciences, Ananny moved to Ireland as an original member of the research staff of Media Lab Europe, the European research partner of the MIT Media Laboratory. While at Media Lab Europe he worked with the Everyday Learning group to design new technologies to support informal learning and public opinion development. Ananny led collaborations with a number of organizations including the BBC, the University of Tampere (Finland), the Ark Children's Cultural Center (Ireland), Notre Dame University (USA), Loyalist College (Canada), the Amsterdam Computer Clubhouse (The Netherlands) and Fatima Mansions, a low-income urban apartment complex in Dublin, Ireland. He was the principal investigator on two international multi-partner European Union grant proposals, his custom software was licensed to a European university for classroom research, and he regularly spoke at European academic and corporate gatherings.