Since 2001 he has been a professor at University of California, Irvine, where he founded the Arts, Computation and Engineering (ACE) graduate program that was active from 2003 to 2011.
He has been a guest professor at the Interdisciplinary Master in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media (CSIM) at Pompeu Fabra University,[4] (Barcelona) from 2007 to 2013.
[9] Petit Mal is a human-sized robot consisting of two large wheels and a central body that appears to continuously be re-equilibrating itself.
It is a robotic work of art that "attempts to explore autonomous behavior as a probe of interactivity and the research field of A-life".
[11] He curated and produced Machine Culture – the first international survey of interactive installation – at SIGGRAPH 93 in Anaheim, CA[12][13] – and edited the associated catalogue and anthology.
In his profile as an editor of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Penny describes his interests as follows: "My ongoing concern with the negotiation of practices, discourses and commitments in engineering with respect to those of the arts has involved an extended consideration of the history and theory of Artificial Intelligence and the forms of Cognitive Science related to it.