Ken Perlin, founding director of the Media Research Laboratory, is a Professor in the CS Department at NYU. He received an Academy Award for his procedural texturing algorithms (widely used in movies), NYC Mayor's award for Excellence in Science and Technology, Sokol award for outstanding NYU Science faculty, and an NSF PYI Award. Perlin directed the NYU Center for Advanced Technology (1994-2004). He received his PhD in CS from NYU, BA in theoretical mathematics from Harvard, headed software development at R/Greenberg Associates and MAGI, and worked on various films, starting with TRON. He serves on the Board of Directors of NYSIA. He is currently Principal Investigator, together with Professor Mary Flanagan of Hunter College, on a three year NSF funded project that designs computer animated constructivist dance games to motivate middle school girls to learn Java programming. He believes that computer games will some day lead to universal programming literacy.