Outside of work, Michelle collaborates with her husband, James Powderly, creating robotic art as Robot Clothes. They exhibited Wildflower Meadow Glacier robot at the 2004 Artbots. Currently, they are collaborating on Inside Out Life Story, an animatronic song cycle based on their experiences in 2004 when they not only got married, but also dealt with a series of hospitalizations and surgeries. Michelle has a BA in Media Theory and a Master's in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University. Michelle's projects include real-time video effects rendered in Java, a networked computer vision installation, and a wearables R & D project for a Fortune 100 company. Her work is influenced by television, her husband, Alexander Calder, literature and knitting.