Ted Hall holds professional and doctoral degrees in architecture (M.Arch., Arch.D.) and is now a senior software developer for extended reality in the Digital Media Commons at the University of Michigan. His career shift began as an M.Arch student in 1980, when he accepted a summer job in the U-M Architecture and Planning Research Laboratory to help develop a computer aided architectural design system for a funded project. Upon graduation in 1981, the Lab hired him as a full-time professional developer.
When the project ended in 1986, so did the job. So, he entered the U-M doctoral program in architecture to pursue another interest, and finally emerged in 1994 with a dissertation on The Architecture of Artificial-Gravity Environments for Long-Duration Space Habitation. He presented his first conference paper on the topic at the Space Studies Institute in 1991.
When not writing software, space architecture remains his expensive hobby. He is a founding member and past chair (2010-2014) of the Space Architecture Technical Committee (SATC) in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and continues to present lectures, conference papers, journal articles, and book chapters regarding the architecture of artificial gravity.
Between completing his Arch.D. in 1994, and returning to the University of Michigan in 2009 to take up his current job, Ted accepted a staff position in computer aided architectural design at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. After reluctantly agreeing to go to Hong Kong for one year, he stayed for over thirteen.