About Tony: A look at the life that inspires the prize Pizzigati lived a brief life that exemplified the spirit of public interest computing. Born in 1971, Tony jumped into computers early on. At ten, he was programming his first computer. At 14, he was helping the Washington, D.C. national office of CISPES, the group that led opposition to Reagan-era U.S. policy in Central America, straighten out its database. Tony would go to earn a degree in computer science from MIT. Throughout his college years, he worked at the world-famous MIT Media Lab and later the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. In the early 1990s, a time when only handfuls of people knew about a new universe called the World Wide Web, Tony was among the earliest Web authors. Tony moved to California in the fall of 1994 and went about building a presence for himself in Silicon Valley as a software consultant. He died the following spring in an auto accident on his way to work. Tony never had a chance to fulfill his computing dreams. This prize in his name aims to help others realize theirs.

https://www.tides.org/awards-prizes/pizzigati-prize/about-tony/