Zachary Watson Memorial Education Fund

Donate to the Fund
Overview

The fund exists to honor the memory of Zachary Watson, our friend and colleague, who died at the age of 29, after a traffic collision.

Each year on March 14, Pi Day, one promising young artist/technologist will receive a $5,000 grant to help further his or her education.

The fund is held and administered by Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization. Donations made through the link above are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law, and will be directed towards the Zachary Watson Memorial Fund. For as long as the fund will allow, Gray Area and co-founders of the fund will award a $5,000 grant to a promising artists/technologist.

Congratulations to the 2017 Recipient!

We are pleased to announce that this year's recipient of the Zachary Watson Fund award is Irene Alvarado. Irene is UX designer and creative coder from Venezuela who is currently working towards a master in Emerging Media and HCI at Carnegie Mellon University. Congratulations Irene and thank you to everyone who applied.

Past Recipients

2016- Yiliu Shen-Burke
2015- Matthias Dörfelt and Enrico Borba

Founding Members of Fund

Sha Hwang
Eric Rodenbeck
Jon Christensen

Zachary Watson
About Zachary Watson

Zachary Watson was a creative coder with strong interest in data visualization, emergent behavior, mapping, and learning new things. He worked on the overlap between code and design, building interactive and procedural graphics.

Zach suffered severe brain injuries in a traffic collision on July 28, 2014. In an effort to honor Watson's enduring love of math, his life support was removed on Saturday August 16th, 2014 at 3:14 p.m., a time intended to symbolize the mathematical constant pi.

Watercolor Maps work with Stamen

Zachary Watson was known for creating works such as the Stamen Design map of Silicon Valley’s private shuttle network that gained attention in the transportation planning world in 2012. He most recently worked as an Exploratorium employee.

A portfolio of Zach's work can be found at http://virtualclockwork.com