Erik Blankinship received his Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Laboratory. He also has an M.Ed. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a B.A. in English Literature with honors from the University of Maryland at College Park where he was a recipient of the Jim Henson Award for Projects Related to Puppetry. He has consulted for France Telecom, Motorola, Intel Research, and Ricoh Innovations on educational, assistive, and communication technology. While a student at MIT he was awarded an Intel fellowship, an Interval Research fellowship, a Media Lab Europe fellowship, and was an active member of the MIT community serving as a Graduate Resident Tutor for four years.