Florian 'Floyd' Mueller’s research interests are in novel interfaces that go beyond traditional interaction paradigms, creating a more seamless connection between humans, bypassing technology. His current interest is in interfaces that deliberately require intense physical effort to facilitate social connectedness between remote participants. He has designed exemplary systems under this theme such as Breakout for Two (together with Stefan Agamanolis), Airhockey over a Distance, Push’N’Pull, Jogging the Distance and Table Tennis for Three.

Florian earned his first degree in Digital Media from Furtwangen, Germany. He received his second degree in Multimedia from Griffith University in Australia and a Masters degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, USA. He also has extensive work experience from the USA, Australia, Ireland and Germany, where he worked for industry and research companies such as Virtual Artists, Springer Verlag, Xerox PARC, FX Palo Alto Laboratory and MIT. After working at Media Lab Europe under Stefan Agamanolis, he worked for the University of Melbourne and also CSIRO – Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, leading the Connecting people group with 7 researchers and 5 students.

Florian’s research is centered on the challenge of creating an interface that is engaging and fun, not simply functional.

Stefan Agamanolis holds MS and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer science from Oberlin College. He has over 10 years of experience inside the MIT Media Lab, first as a student and later as one of the founding research directors at Media Lab Europe, its sister lab in Dublin, Ireland. There he led the Human Connectedness group, an interdisciplinary team that explored the future of human relationships as mediated by technology. Most recently he developed plans for the Distance Lab, a new research and innovation laboratory for distance-reducing technologies, based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.