Dr. James M. Bower Ph.D. is the founder, Chairman, and CVO of Numedeon Inc. which in 1999 launched Whyville.net as a learning environment and one of the first virtual worlds for tweens. Whyville,net currently has 4.1 million registered users who spend, on average 34 minutes on the site per log in, and on average 3.2 hours per month. Dr. Bower is a computational neurobiologist on the faculty of the Research Imaging Center of the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio (bower-lab.org) and has served on education and technology advisory committees for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.