We’re a group of experienced designers, developers, researchers, writers, and data enthusiasts who like to tackle complex, unique problems. Our favorite projects are often in unfamiliar disciplines, working with domain experts who want to explore novel solutions to interesting questions. We’ve worked with healthcare professionals to redesign the patient data pipeline, with farming advocates to build interfaces to help farmers calculate land costs, and with scientists to build tools to visualize genomes, cells, and virus outbreaks.
We’re interested in clients who want to think with us: problem solving and iterating on potential solutions while learning from their data. Sometimes we’re starting with spreadsheets or databases, sometimes it’s piles of papers, and sometimes we have to seek out the right data sources ourselves. It’s never perfect, but we love the process of untangling the mess and finding what is of value. Our projects range from six week sprints to multi-year engagements, but no matter what we’re committed to using design to build tools that are easy to use, fun to explore, and substantive in their treatment of the data.
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 information. After completing his dissertation in 2004, he spent time developing tools for visualization of genetic data as a postdoc with Eric Lander at the Eli & Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. During the 2006-2007 school year, Ben was the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the Carnegie Mellon School of Design.
He is the author of Visualizing Data (O’Reilly, 2007) and the co-author, with Casey Reas, of Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (MIT Press, 2007) and Getting Started with Processing (O’Reilly, 2010), which describe the project they co-founded in 2001.
Ben’s work was part of the Whitney Biennial in 2002 and the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial in 2003 and 2006. Other pieces have appeared in the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography in New York, at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, and in the films Minority Report and The Hulk. His information graphics have also illustrated articles for the New York Times, New York Magazine, and the journal Nature. Ben was selected as one of Fast Company’s 50 Most Influential Designers in America (2011) and as one of Slate’s Top Right (2011). He has lectured on data, design, and programming on five continents.
In 2011, Ben won the National Design Award for Interaction Design. At a White House luncheon for the honorees, he had the opportunity to meet Michelle Obama, whom he found to be very gracious but quite imposing in heels.
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Mark Schifferli likes to make life easier through computing. His programming career started at Target Analysis Group, where he processed and analyzed nonprofit revenue data. After seeing his first data visualization application, he was hooked on teasing meaningful stories from large and complicated data sets. This led him to join EnerNOC, an energy management company, where he developed applications for critical real time decision making during electrical grid emergencies.
Prior to programming, Mark contributed to various ensembles in San Francisco’s experimental music scene as a guitarist and recording engineer. Mark graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Indiana University, Bloomington, with a BA in philosophy and minors in math and French.
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Paul Cronan is an artist and designer. His path to information design was sparked early on by a fascination with geography and mapmaking. He earned a B.F.A. in Communication Design at Washington University in St. Louis. There, he focused on book arts, typography and web design, merging his interests to map the complexity of urban space in interactive ways.
Before joining the Fathom team, Paul worked as a designer in his hometown, Baltimore, and illustrated a novel about prehistoric time travel for Random House. He enjoys cycling, making typefaces and trying unusual foods.
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Libby is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design where she studied Graphic Design, which was great for her because she loves to play with words — creative and critical writing, drawing and arranging letterforms, and exploring other methods of making meaning.
She spends most of her time on her laptop, discovering Illustrator shortcuts or experimenting with HTML and p5.js, but believes that the only true medium is the graphic T-shirt. She hopes to use her newly-acquired graphic design skills for a lifetime of making complex information meaningful, impactful, and accessible.
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Kyle Oba is a developer with a passion for computing and building software that solves problems for people. His love of programming began in the 80s, when he learned how to use the LOGO programming language to construct flowers from repeating squares. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in Materials Science and Engineering, he quickly realized that he wanted to work writing software.
He uses art projects as an opportunity to research technologies, and some of his projects have been featured in the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Honolulu Biennial Foundation. In his spare time, Kyle enjoys collecting photos of public signs which indicate human systems problems.
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Katherine is a Hong Kong–born creative technologist interested in the pursuit of poetic tech. She graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts with a major in Media Arts + Practice and minors in programming and linguistics. Her latest passion project is exploring interfaces for writing, representing, and playing with poetry. She spends her days learning and making and is a firm believer in finding meaning and beauty in systems big and small.
She can typically be found either writing HTML or buried in the weeds of internet culture (occasionally both, on Tumblr). She loves a good walkable city.
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Ellory Laning has always been curious about the ways in which stories are shared and remembered. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a BA in Religious Studies, where she was preoccupied with understanding how the dialogues surrounding female voices and bodies in religious texts have evolved over space, time, and culture. Through her studies, she gained a deep appreciation for the social and political dynamics at play in the transmission of narratives and information.
Prior to joining Fathom, Ellory worked as a paralegal, focusing on the financing of affordable housing and community development projects in her home state of Massachusetts. When left to her own devices, Ellory enjoys writing murder mystery parties, convincing herself that she has an above average whiskey palate, and acting as commissioner for her fantasy football-esque The Bachelor/Bachelorette league.
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Elissa is passionate about projects that help others and create personalized and creative solutions. She has found programming has been an impactful way to pursue these goals into meaningful developments. She is currently an undergraduate student at Northeastern University, studying Computer Science and Marketing. Leveraging the university's global opportunities and her passion for travel, she embarked on a summer semester exploring Italian architecture and urbanism in cities such as Venice, Florence, Siena, and Rome. This catapulted her interest in architecture and intentional human centered design. Her academic journey continued with a semester abroad in Rome during Spring 2024 before beginning as a summer intern at Fathom.
Elissa finds joy in cooking and trying new foods especially anything that challenges her kitchen skills. She enjoys exploring different architecture through traveling and exploring cities. Her favorite route to run, although a classic, is by far across the Harvard Bridge and down the Charles River Esplanade.
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