Ben Fry

Who is Ben Fry?

Benjamin Fry is an American expert in data visualization. He is a principal of Fathom. He is also a co-developer of Processing, an open source programming language and integrated development environment built for the electronic arts and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the basics of computer programming in a visual context. The Processing design environment developed together with Casey Reas won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005.

Fry received his Ph.D. from the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab, under the direction of John Maeda. During 2006-2007, Ben Fry was the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the Carnegie Mellon School of Design.

His other interests include visualization of genetic data. His personal work in this area was featured at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum National Design Triennial in 2003.

Fry's artwork has been featured in the 2006 Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the Whitney Biennial in 2002, Museum of Modern Art in New York, at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria and in the films Minority Report and The Hulk. He is the winner of the 2011 National Design Award in category "Interaction Design"