Ben Fry received his doctoral degree from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on combining fields such as Computer Science, Statistics, Graphic Design, and Data Visualization as a means for understanding complex data, particularly in application to visualizing genetic data. With Casey Reas of UCLA, he currently develops Processing, an open source programming environment for teaching computational design and sketching interactive media software that won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005 and can be seen in this year's Cooper-Hewitt Triennial. In 2006, Fry received a New Media Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation to support the project. His personal work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial, the Cooper-Hewitt Triennial, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His information graphics have illustrated articles for the journal Nature, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and Seed. He is currently writing a book for O'Reilly about data visualization with Processing.