Wolfram Research Announces Innovator Award Winners for 2018

Leaders in Data Science, Education, Engineering, and Mathematics Honored

Wolfram technologies have long been a major force in many areas of industry and research. Leaders in many top organizations and institutions play a major role in pushing the boundaries of how the Wolfram technology stack is leveraged for innovation across fields and disciplines.

Founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram recognized eight such leaders with the Wolfram Innovator Award at the Wolfram Technology Conference in Champaign, Illinois. “It’s always a pleasure to see very interesting people who end up becoming deeply invested in our technology and doing wonderful things with it,” Wolfram said.

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This year’s winners include:

• For excellence in teaching computational thinking and mathematics to high school students:Abby Brown, a Professor of Mathematics at Torrey Pines High School, where she develops innovative ways to get her students interested in STEM through 3D printing, mathematics clubs and lesson plans that incorporate artificial intelligence with Wolfram technologies.
• For innovative use of Mathematica inside and outside of college classrooms:Bruce Colletti, a retired United States Air Force Major and defense contractor, whose work uses Wolfram technology for high-level commercial, academic and government projects focused on operations, logistics, program evaluation and homeland security.
• For developing mechanical engineering solutions to drive efficiency and innovation:David Creech, Principal Engineer at McDermott, who leads the development of new systems and processes culminating in hundreds of thousands of lines of Wolfram Language code and thousands of pages of documentation.
• For optimizing data mining and database processing for nuclear tank waste:Nicholas Mecholsky, Research Scientist at the Vitreous State Laboratory and adjunct assistant professor at Catholic University of America, whose work uses Mathematica to model large-scale chemical processes that increase the safety of nuclear waste storage.
• For conducting innovative research in natural sciences and developing tools for large-size lectures with Wolfram technology:Jorge Ramirez, applied mathematician at Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín, whose work spans natural and biological sciences and includes innovations in education delivery using Mathematica.
• For expanding the scope of analytics in the insurance industry using Wolfram Language:Aaron Santos, Data Science Supervisor at EMC Insurance, whose work uses Wolfram technology for rapid prototyping, innovative IoT measurements and multiparadigm data science to develop innovative solutions to complex problems.
• For developing high-level simulations for time savings and efficiency:Neil Singer, President at AC Kinetics, Inc., where he uses Wolfram SystemModeler for advanced simulation of digital motor controllers.
• For contributions to decision making under complicated and less-idealized probabilistic structures using Mathematica:Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the New York UniversityTandon School of Engineering and author of the multivolume essay the Incerto, whose work examines risk, probability and computational preasymptotics, a field that is often ignored.

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