Anne

 

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Anne Gray is a systems engineer and physicist, a science fiction editor and proofreader, user experience designer, wiki editor, writer, smof* (cat herder, volunteer manager, whatever you call it), singer, dancer, mom, and so much more.

Anne and Brian

Born in December of 1974 in Ann Arbor Michigan, Anne grew up in one of the most diverse, hippy towns in the country, and attended alternative, student-focused public schools in which she thrived. She left Ann Arbor in 1992 to get a BA in History from Grinnell College in Iowa (where she also studied physics and technical theater), took a road trip around the country with her sister in 1996, then moved to Chicago, where she worked as a web designer in a small start-up company now known as LiquidPrint. She left Chicago in 1998 to get a Master's in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and moved back to Ann Arbor in 2001.

While looking for professional work, Anne got involved running the Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association and their annual convention, ConFusion, as well as the Ann Arbor Women in Computing chapter, where she helped seed a scholarship for women in computing. She also served on the Board of Directors of the Science Fiction Oral History Association, and began doing freelance copy editing and proofreading of fannish and professional publications. She worked for almost two years managing a small gift shop and gallery in downtown Ann Arbor, then landed a position as a human factors engineer at Soar Technology, a local artificial intelligence research firm. Sadly, she was downsized in 2008, but was lucky enough to sign on with Klein Associates in Dayton, OH, as part of their cognitive engineering team, starting in 2009.

Anne met microbiologist Brian Gray when he came with mutual friends to see her perform in the sketch comedy troupe Monkey Rampant in 2007. They got engaged just over a year later on a terrific trip to Hawaii, and were jointly the Transatlantic Fan Fund delegates in 2010. Anne left Klein just before their TAFF trip in order to move back to MI to have her daughter, Rosie, and to follow Brian as he completed his doctorate at the U of M, had a three-year post-doc fellowship in NM and MI, and happily found a faculty position at York College of Pennsylvania. She has continued to run SF conventions and was most recently Diversity Facilitator for Detcon1 in Detroit, July 2014. She lives in York, PA with her family and is still figuring out what comes next.

You can find out more about Anne Gray's education, work and volunteer history in her portfolio section.

Anne's whole family dances and sings, and she has studied a variety of movement arts, including modern dance, tai chi, and mime. She has acted in plays and musicals, sung in choirs, and done technical work on several productions, starting in first grade and going on from there. Outside of blogging, wiki and fanzine articles and sf criticism, Anne mainly writes poetry.

Anne runs science fiction conventions and related volunteer organizations as a hobby. Her practice of copyediting and proofing publications both fictional and non-fictional sometimes earns her money on a freelance basis, which helps her to afford the rest of the hobby. She edits and maintains wikipedia and other knowledge archives. More about Anne's fan activities (fanac).

Anne's particular area of engineering is called many things, including Human Factors (HF), Human-computer Interaction (HCI), and Cognitive Systems Design (CSE), as well as (sometimes) Business Analysis and User Experience (UX) Design. She is trained in a variety of types of systems design, especially control systems design, and her particular interest and experience lies mainly in the requirements specification portion of the design process. To put it simply, she knows how to interview and observe people in both natural and experimental settings in order to understand what kind of work they do, what decisions they make, and what information they need in order to make those decisions, as well as how to document those requirements and translate them into design recommendations. These skills and techniques are applicable to any work domain, but Anne's experience is largely in web design, intelligence analysis, command, control, and coordination of robotic vehicles, team command of submarines, and dismounted infantry command, control, and communication. Find out more about Human Factors Engineering.

If you are looking for Anne on the web, the best name to keep an eye out for is Netmouse, though she also posts under her real name, and has written under her previous married name, Anne KG Murphy, and her maiden name, Anne K Gay.

* smof = secret master of fandom