Alex Winter, a student from Bellevue and a senior at Lawrence University, has been awarded a $25,000 Watson Fellowship that allows a student to pursue a topic of a student’s choosing. Winter was awarded a fellowship for his proposal to investigate the social phenomenon of video gaming in Asia.

Winter wants to explore the cultural differences between video gaming in the United States, where it is largely a solitary activity, and East Asia, where gaming is much more socially mainstreamed and exceptional “gamers” can achieve rock star-like status.