Dr. Amon Millner is at Olin College as a Computing Innovation Fellow until 2012 (sponsored by the Computing Research Association). He joined Olin after completing his Ph.D. at MIT, where he worked in the Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group. There he served as a member of the core design team of the award-winning NSF-supported Scratch programming language. As a lead designer of the Scratch Sensor Board, his work involved designing, deploying, and evaluating a computational construction kit and developing engaging activities that enabled young people from diverse backgrounds to create novel tangible user interfaces. Schools, museums, and community centers have adopted his tools and activities. Companies have commercialized variants of the Scratch Sensor Board open hardware platform.

Dr. Millner has worked closely with K-12 learners and undergraduate and graduate students in research and design project settings. He leverages Olin's unique environment to pursue his passion for helping learners at all levels explore their own passions through design and computing. Prior to joining Olin, he helped shape the ways in which international networks of innovative learning environments (such as Computer Clubhouses and Fab Labs) engaged youth in design and computing activities.

Dr. Millner’s research explores the intersection of human computer interaction, tangible user interface design, community organizing, and the learning sciences. His research and teaching efforts both aim to help designers from all backgrounds seamlessly create artifacts that blend physical and digital materials, and learn in the process – while encouraging their peers to create. He advocates for integrating outside interests into curricula. His own outside interests include travel, Capoeira Angola, snowboarding, mucking with microcontrollers, and tinkering. Before completing his Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences (2010), Dr. Millner earned a M.S. in Human Computer Interactions from Georgia Tech (2003) and a B.S. in Computer Science from USC (2001).