Richard A. Bolt was founding member of the MIT Media Lab. During Dr. Bolt’s two-decade career at MIT, he was part of the Architecture Machine Group and later led the Media Lab’s Human-Computer Interface group as a senior research scientist. He was also the original program manager for the Lab's Things That Think consortium.
His work focused on multimodal human/computer interaction and human-machine interfaces. He also worked in research and computer systems design at Bolt Beranek Newman Inc. and GE.
Dr. Bolt turned to fiction writing after retiring in 1997. His suspense novel Sailor Take Warning is set partly in a fictional lab at MIT.