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AnnMarie Thomas is a mechanical engineer and advocate for early engineering education. She is most well known as the founder and director of the Playful Learning Lab at University of St. Thomas, where she is centrally located, which encourages children to playfully learn.
The best way I can describe her work is fundamental, imaginative, and playful. AnnMarie strips away the complexity of learning engineering and simplifies it to tangible pieces, akin to toys. In the way I think legos are the smallest, most basic building blocks of analog toys, I feel that her work is similar to the most basic building blocks of interaction design across the physical and digital tools.
Her project, Squishy Circuits is a beautiful example of basic software and hardware interaction that feels like playdough. Its form is in a book, likely to make the course and tools accessible for parents and teachers to use. (something I also admire).
A lecture of hers where she focuses on the importance of play and what that means.