Peter Shann Ford is an Australian CEO, bionics software developer, author and former journalist and news anchor. He is the Founder of , a neural systems technology company, and the inventor of , an EMG based communications and control system for people with profound disabilities including Locked in Syndrome.
Career
He was educated at the Anglican Grammar School, Brisbane, was a Rotary Exchange Student to the USA, dropped out of Medicine, graduated with a commission from the Officer Training Unit, Scheyville and completed National Service with 3RAR infantry battalion. Ford began work in the media as a newspaper and radio journalist in Queensland, before joining the Seven Television Network in Sydney as a reporter and news reader. In 1981, he moved to the USA and joined CNN in Atlanta as a news anchor and reporter and was a founding anchor at CNN's Headline News. In 1984 he became the 6pm and 11pm news anchor at the NBC affiliate in Miami, FL, and in 1988 he joined NBC's WRC-TV in Washington DC as a news anchor. In 1982, while at CNN, he became a computer programmer/analyst on a team developing microcomputers for rehabilitation and communications for people with disabilities at the in Atlanta. Working with Principal Investigator , he wrote JoyWriter, an Apple-based program that enabled people with neuromuscular disease and spinal injuries to replace a computer keyboard with a joystick controller. In Australia, at the Seven Network he was an anchor for Seven News. and was the first co-anchor of the national television morning show, Sunrise" with Chris Bath. In the United States, he covered the NASA Space Shuttle program for more than a decade, reported on assignment from The White House, The Pentagon, Moscow, The Vatican, Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf, and after 9/11 from Pakistan, the Northwest Frontier and Tora Bora in Afghanistan. In 2000 Simon & Schuster, New York, published his first novel, "The Keeper of Dreams", set in Australia and the USA.
In July 2019, "The Australian" national newspaper published his tribute to Astronaut Neil Armstrong whom he met after publishing a voice analysis of his first words stepping onto the moon.
Honours and awards
In 2018 he represented Control Bionics to win the first award in London, in a field of 42 nations. Ford is a winner of the National Disability Award 2015 for Excellence in Accessible Technology for He is a Lifetime Member of Mensa. He is a former
