2025

Nathan Myhrvold

Intellectual Ventures

Areas: 3D Printing, Asteroids, Biostatistics, Computer Science, Global Health and Development, Image and Signal Processing, Image Processing, Nuclear Energy, Paleontology, Planetary Science, Statistics, Theoretical Physics

Dr. Nathan Myhrvold is a prominent scientist, technologist, inventor, author and food photographer. In a 14-year tenure at Microsoft, Myhrvold led advanced technology and business development groups, founded Microsoft Research, managed an R&D budget of $2 billion and served as the company’s chief strategist and chief technology officer. Myhrvold previously had cofounded Dynamical Systems Research, a software company, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, where his research with Professor Stephen Hawking centered on quantum theories of gravitation. Myhrvold has published peer-reviewed research in planetary science, paleontology and climate science.

In 2000, after retiring from Microsoft, Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures (IV), which he leads as CEO and one of its most prolific inventors, with more than 850 US patents awarded. Myhrvold is vice chairman of TerraPower, a pioneer in advanced nuclear energy. He also has served as an adviser to startup companies that IV has launched to commercialize advanced metamaterials technologies.

Myhrvold is the author of seven Modernist Cuisine culinary and photography books and pioneer of innovative photography techniques and equipment. His most recent landscape photography book Natural Wonders is published by National Geographic and is on sale now.

Myhrvold holds a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics, as well as a master’s degree in mathematical economics, from Princeton University. His master’s degree in geophysics and space physics, as well as his bachelor’s degree in mathematics, are from the University of California, Los Angeles.

2021

Houston Methodist Research Institute

Areas: Biomedical Research, Biostatistics, Biotechnology, Mathematical Biology, Mathematical Modeling

Houston Methodist is a leading academic medical center that takes a multidisciplinary approach to changing the face of medicine. Doctors Cristini, Butner and Wang are a team of engineer scientists at the Houston Methodist Research Institute who use mathematical modeling to study biological problems, with a special focus on disease progression and treatment. They design and implement mathematical descriptions of the key biophysical phenomena within the tumor microenvironment. They are currently working to establish methods to use mathematical modeling to predict cancer-patient response to immune checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy. Mathematica has played a key role in this process, allowing them to rapidly implement and update model versions, perform testing and optimization, and conduct extensive analysis on large sets of patient data.

Award accepted by Dr. Joseph D. Butner, faculty fellow, Mathematics in Medicine program; Dr. Vittorio Cristini, professor and director, Mathematics in Medicine program; and Dr. Zhihui Wang, research scientist and associate professor, Mathematics in Medicine program.

2016

Richard Scott

Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Areas: Bioimaging, Biomedical Research, Biostatistics

Richard Scott is part of a small group of engineers, pathologists and business development professionals at the pathology department at Mount Sinai working to commercialize image-based prostate cancer prediction models. The design of the analysis algorithms and the majority of the system development and testing were done using Mathematica and the Wolfram Language. One of the key technical advances of Scott’s system is its ability to accurately segment gland rings and fragments from prostate tissue across the full range of disease presentations using a Delaunay triangulation and Voronoi analysis.