Michelle Lou composes mainly in the realm of electro-acoustic music, both in hardware and in computer based forms. She has also created large scale sound installations which are often performative and collaborative. She performs and improvises on acoustic and electric bass, electric guitar, and on laptop and various electronics. Her work has been presented at Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, The Festival of New American Music (Sacramento), the MATA Festival (New York City), The 66th American Music Festival at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., The Rainy Days Festival (Luxembourg), Ultima Festival (Oslo), Chance and Circumstance (Brooklyn), Klub Katarakt (Hamburg), Klangwerkstatt and MaerzMusik (both in Berlin), amongst others. She received degrees in double bass performance and music composition from UC San Diego with additional studies at The Conservatorio G. Nicolini in Piacenza, Italy (double bass) and The UDK in Graz, Austria (composition), the latter on a Fulbright Fellowship. Graduate studies culminated in a doctorate in composition from Stanford University. Michelle was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and an Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She has been granted commissions from institutions like the Fromm Music Foundation, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, and the Norwegian Arts Council. Michelle has taught at short term courses such as the WasteLAnd Summer Composition Course, Line Upon Line Festival Academy, and the Yarn/Wire Institute at Stony Brook.  She has also taught as visiting faculty at Dartmouth College, the Akademie für Neue Musik in Boswil, Switzerland, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.