Vanessa Theme Ament is the former Edwin F. and Virginia B. Ball Endowed Chair in Telecommunications at Ball State University. She hails from the film industry in Los Angeles, where she was a Foley artist, sound editor, and voice actor for film and television. She has worked on many notable films including Predator, Die Hard, Noises Off, A Goofy Movie, Dolores Claiborne, Malice, RoboCop2, and Platoon, which won the Academy Award for Best Sound in 1986. She received her Ph.D. from Georgia State University in Moving Images Studies.