From our origins in mathematical and technical computing, Wolfram technologies have gradually emerged as a major force in many other areas of computing. Passionate individuals and organizations have played a major role in helping advance the usage of our technologies. We recognize these deserving recipients with the Wolfram Innovator Award, which is awarded at the Wolfram Technology Conferences around the world.
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In Steve Bush's role developing household consumer items at The Procter & Gamble Company, he's involved in the physics behind products as well as their economic feasibility. His work with Mathematica includes developing sophisticated tools for computer-aided design and optimizing the orifice size needed to maximize jet momentum, as well as setting up an efficient workflow from idea to prototype.
Hear Steve Bush talk about optimizing face gear surfaces »
Seth Chandler, director of the Program on Law and Computation, studies insurance policy, patent law, and other facets of the US legal system. After Hurricane Ike in 2008, Chandler analyzed catastrophe models and other data in Mathematica to show how the insurance market can better handle paying for hurricane damages. He developed several interactive Demonstrations to help examine the allocation of losses from hurricanes and used them in his testimony before the Texas legislature.
Hear Seth Chandler talk about Mathematica's role in hurricane insurance research » View the interactive CDF transcript of Chandler's testimony before the Texas Legislature »
Chemical engineer Ronald Kurnik develops medical devices, using Mathematica for rapid prototyping of algorithms for signal and image processing and for quantitative chemical reaction modeling. His work has led Roche to file for 15 patents, 7 of which have been issued so far.
Diego Oviedo-Salcedo demonstrated innovative use of Wolfram technologies in the creation of homework, solutions, and presentations for his engineering classes, and also used Mathematica extensively for his PhD research. He is a Wolfram-certified instructor in Latin America.
Eric Schulz, a mathematics instructor at Walla Walla Community College who created Mathematica's Classroom Assistant palette, joined authors William Briggs, Lyle Cochran, and Bernard Gillett to write Calculus, an ebook published by Pearson Education in 2010. The textbook combines narrative material, examples, and exercises together with 650 interactive figures in an engaging and rigorous presentation. Using the free Wolfram CDF Player, students can immediately navigate through sections and explore the ebook's interactive figures and intuitive text, which combine to bring hard-to-convey concepts to life.
Hear Eric Schulz talk about developing interactive textbooks with CDF » Interact with Calculus »
Dana Scott was an early user of Wolfram technologies in teaching, including developing a Mathematica-based course in projective geometry. The co-inventor of nondeterministic finite automata, winner of the 1976 ACM Turing Award, and founder of domain theory, he continues to employ new Mathematica functionality in innovative ways, for example by using SatisfiabilityInstances to find tilings of pentominoes.
As part of the Advanced Air Traffic Management team at Boeing, Michael Ulrey develops quantitative models to study the safety of operations and make compelling safety cases to regulators. He has created 3D models to analyze flight paths of planes landing on parallel runways and simulate various situations.
Hear Michael Ulrey talk about flight operational safety analysis »
Stan Wagon uses Mathematica for his teaching and research in computational dynamics, number theory, and Mathematical logic, and has published several books. He also created a square-wheeled bicycle and a track to ride it on, which landed him a spot in Ripley's Believe It or Not!, and competes in the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Contest with ice sculptures based on mathematical objects.
See Stan Wagon's Mathematica Demonstrations »
Debra Woods develops and teaches courses for NetMath, an online math program at the University of Illinois. The courses use Mathematica-based modules that combine textbooks with interactive examples and illustrations to help students focus on mathematical concepts.
Hear Debra Woods talk about exploring mathematics »
As the Chief Risk Officer at EQA Partners, Philip Zecher designed, developed, and implemented a front-to-back trading system, from data acquisition to reporting, using Wolfram technologies. The system manages the flow of data to reduce data errors, time, and costs.
Hear Philip Zecher talk about developing an enterprise-wide trading platform »
W. Craig Carter is recognized for his many uses of Mathematica over the years, starting with his PhD studies. He has tutored other MIT faculty with course examples in Mathematica to help their work, from the project planning stage forward. Craig has also used Mathematica for many years in his course "Mathematics for Materials Science and Engineers." Craig's achievements using Mathematica in his research include prototyping an idea with a start-up company to create a new type of battery. He also used Wolfram technology to collaborate on and help design an art piece feature at the Pompidou in Paris.
See W. Craig Carter's Mathematica Demonstrations »
Robert Nachbar is recognized for using Mathematica at Merck. He was instrumental in the Gardasil HPV vaccine project, turning a research-grade model created by his coworkers Elamin Elbasha and Erik Dasbach into a production-grade simulation package. Robert is responsible for the Wolfram|Alpha trial at Merck, has used Mathematica frequently in his research on viral dynamics for the hepatitis C virus, and has modeled clinical trial data.
Thomas Roux is recognized for developing an innovative web service solution for financial risk management, based on webMathematica and webUnRisk. Thomas has shown how Wolfram technologies are integral to the fundamental sustainability of the global banking system, from his native France to the United States.
Rubén Berrocal and Marisa Talavera are recognized for revolutionizing the teaching of mathematics and science in Panama by incorporating Wolfram technology into their curriculum. SENACYT adopted the first countrywide provision for the computational software to be installed in all universities, and led plans to install it in high schools. SENACYT has trained professors, researchers, and students in Mathematica across Panama, ensuring that the country will become a bastion of scientific education recognized throughout the world as a supreme destination for intellectual enlightenment.
Richard Anderson is recognized for his pioneering use of gridMathematica to explore network properties using percolation and random graph theories. He has developed gridMathematica applications that use a probabilistic approach along with large-scale multiprocessor computing techniques to explore the underlying structure of complex networks. This work led to the development of new methodologies to identify nodes that are critical to network cohesion and connectivity.
Fred Szabo is recognized for his contributions in education. Using the phrase "A New Kind of Learning" in his presentations to demonstrate Mathematica's usefulness throughout an educational curriculum, Fred has showcased Mathematica in broad discussion about the greater use of technology in Canadian schools and universities, citing his own mathematics courses where close to 90% of the students find Mathematica engaging and fun to use. Fred was among the first to embrace online courses, and began a plan for a series of videos to teach students in less technical areas how to use Mathematica. A recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the President's Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Fred's goal is to significantly contribute to global education, especially to making the instruction of mathematics more available in Latin America.
Dr. Kazuhiro Iwadoh is a medical doctor who studies biostatistics at Tokyo Women's Medical University. He constructed a decision-making support system in Mathematica to estimate the possibility of injury to a transplanted organ by determining examining parameters that could change over time. The end result is a program that displays an array of a patient's information such as prescription history and other factors, allowing the physician to select a treatment option tailored to the patient. Dr. Iwadoh hopes the system will contribute to a higher rate of success in organ transplants and for medical procedures in general.
Learn more about Kazuhiro Iwadoh's work »
Dr. Ryohei Miyadera wants his Kwansei Gakuin High School students to love mathematics and encourages them to perform advanced research in non-traditional ways. He teaches his students to use Mathematica to examine and realize their ideas even if they don't yet know the high-level mathematics at work. Dr. Miyadera thinks Mathematica enables young people to enjoy mathematics because they aren't focused on the calculation, but instead on the underlying concepts. A recent example of his students' work in Mathematica made them finalists for the Asia region in the Google Science Fair 2012 competition. Feedback from his students and successes like this support Dr. Miyadera's approach to teaching.
See Ryohei Miyadera's Mathematica Demonstrations »
Grigory Fridman is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Economical Cybernetics and Mathematical Methods for Economics at Saint Petersburg State University of Economics in Saint Petersburg, Russia. With his help StPSUE became the first university in Russia to offer access to Mathematica to all faculty and students.
Thomas Weber is recognized as an expert on quantitative methods in finance and risk. Being a heavy user of Mathematica since Version 1.2, Thomas utilizes this powerful tool for his consultancy for big banks, energy suppliers, and other institutions. Over these many years he has extended Mathematica as needed. For example, he developed a database link long before the Data Access Kit was available. He also integrated different pricing libraries into Mathematica, which allow kinds of risk analysis that go way beyond what is normally possible within financial institutions.
A professor in biomedical image analysis, Bart ter Haar Romeny uses Mathematica to design brain-inspired image analysis methods for computer-aided diagnosis. He is an enthusiastic teacher, and introduced Mathematica as a design tool in the curriculum for all students of his department and in most projects in his group. He advocates that Mathematica is ideal for designing innovative algorithms and for "playing with the math." His PhD students van Almsick, Duits, Franken, (now Professor) Florack, Janssen, and Bekkers substantially contributed to the Mathematica packages on brain-inspired computing. He cochaired with Markus van Almsick the International Mathematica Symposium 2008 in Maastricht and teaches a popular national course on biologically inspired computing (book written in Mathematica), which was thrice awarded the BME Teaching Award.
Rolf Mertig is a physicist working in different fields as a software consultant. His specialties include efficient webMathematica programming and programmatic CDF generation. Through his own consulting company, GluonVision GmbH based in Berlin, Germany, he works with companies and universities in order for them to get the most out of Mathematica, webMathematica, and CDF.
Physicist Frank Brand teaches courses in business mathematics, statistics, econometrics, and optimization using Mathematica. He has used Mathematica for many years, starting with his PhD thesis, "Optimization of Complex Optical Systems with Evolution Strategies." Frank's achievements using Mathematica in his research include the automatic construction of quality functions related to optimization problems. He also used Wolfram technology to write books—very recently he published a book on the analysis of complex systems, based on applications of graph theory.
Jacqueline Zizi is a passionate and family-centered individual (mother of six and grandmother of 14) who loves mathematics and computation. She has been using Mathematica as a programming language for education and teaching as well as providing her Wolfram Training instructor services all around France. Furthermore, she wrote a simulation tool for high-risk boat navigation (CGA, Alstom Group), a tour in a protein associating music and zooming for IHES, and a conjecture about Grothendieck invariants solved in the special case of graph theory for Professor O. Mathieu in abstract mathematics. Twenty years ago Jacqueline wrote a trilogy of books in French about general considerations in programming and mathematics for education purposes. After the national curriculum was changed, leading to "Polytechnique" and "grandes écoles," she published a book following such a curriculum which, although old, is still for sale.
Stefan Braun is recognized for using Mathematica in industrial applications. He has used Mathematica and the SmartCAEFab in more that 150+ industrial projects in different application areas. SmartCAE's software solutions allow practical users to simulate complex applications problems, with a lot of parameters, without being a simulation or Mathematica expert.
