Michael Neff is an associate professor of Computer Science and Cinema & Technocultural Studies at the University of California, Davis where he directs the Motion Lab, an interdisciplinary research effort in character animation and embodied input. His Ph.D. is from the University of Toronto and he is also a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. His interests include character animation tools, especially modeling expressive movement, physics-based animation, gesture and applying performing arts knowledge to animation. At Davis, he is working to bridge the art and technology communities on campus, collaborating with computer scientists, dancers, choreographers and geologists. He received an NSF CAREER Award (2009-14), the Alain Fournier Award for his dissertation (2005), a best paper award from Intelligent Virtual Agents (2007) and the Isadora Duncan Award for Visual Design (2009).