Michael Byrne is the Creative Lead for Tech, Arts, and Culture at Cornell University’s graduate campus in New York City, Cornell Tech, where he explores the intersections of dance, design, and digital technology. He is a Research Associate at the Digital Life Initiative and co-directs the Milstein Summer Program in Technology and Humanity, both of which engage critically and creatively with emergent socio-technical systems. Michael has been awarded the 2025–26 Howard D. Rothschild Fellowship in Dance from Harvard University to examine how AI and XR can transmute historical ephemera from the Houghton Library into site-specific activations at Jacob's Pillow—the iconic dance center, school, and festival in Massachusetts.

Other collaborative highlights include working with the New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute (NYCI), Martha Graham Dance School, and Ballet Hispánico, with support received from the National Science Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation to investigate shared computational, curatorial, and choreographic practices. As a Dance Research Fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Michael combined mixed reality and archival (re)performance to examine Graham's lost wartime dance-dramas. He was selected to participate in the Extended Realities track at the New Museum’s arts and technology incubator, New Inc, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for ERVKP—an organization dedicated to advancing the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Having completed his design and art direction training at the Vega School in South Africa, Michael pursued performance studies at the Royal Academy of Music, King’s College London, RADA, and the University of Cambridge. For over a decade, he appeared in the narrative repertoire of The Royal Ballet, including Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Giselle, La Bayadère, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote (USA tour), The Firebird, The Winter's Tale (Australian tour), Manon, Ondine, Mayerling, Anastasia, Prince of the Pagodas, Strapless, Sylvia, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Other credits involved performing at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in King Lear, As You Like It, Anne Boleyn, and The Merry Wives of Windsor (UK tour); traveling to Tokyo and Yokohama in The Royal Opera's production of La Traviata; joining the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Ballet companies during their respective Covent Garden seasons; and even singing as a backing vocalist for Elton John at Wembley Stadium.


Contact: mjb556@cornell.edu
Computational Histories Program: www.dli.tech.cornell.edu/computational-histories