When I look up, I can see wispy clouds passing overhead. Large photos hang on the gallery walls. They're pictures of a landscape devastated by war and portraits of men fighting in those wars. I hear footsteps behind me. I turn around and watch two figures enter the room and take up stations in front of the portraits.

D. Fox Harrell, associate professor of digital media with appointments in the MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing program and in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has recently been awarded several grants to advance his research at the intersection of the social sciences and digital technology. These grants, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the MIT CSAIL Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) Alliance, and the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST), together amount to $1.35 million in support for Harrell's groundbreaking interdisciplinary research. Harrell's new set of complementary initiatives builds upon his NSF CAREER Grant research project, "Computing for Advanced Identity Representation," to delve more deeply into the dynamic relationship between virtual avatars and personal identities. He was able to push this work in innovative new directions while spending the 2014-15 year as a fellow at Stanford University in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (with the support of the Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication). "For five years I have been researching this intersection between human experiences and our identities as implemented across digital technologies such as video games and social media," Harrell says.