2024

José Guillermo Sánchez León

Instituto Universitario de Física Fundamental y Matemáticas

Areas: Applied Mathematics, Authoring and Publishing, Authoring in Mathematica, Computational Thinking, Computer Science

José Guillermo Sánchez León worked in the nuclear industry for over 30 years while simultaneously teaching as an associate professor at the Universidad de Salamanca. He is recently retired but continues as a researcher at the Instituto Universitario de Física Fundamental y Matemáticas (IUFFyM) of the Universidad de Salamanca, participating in a diverse array of research projects and publications. Furthermore, he conducts research on the history of medieval astronomy, using the extensive classic books of the Biblioteca General Histórica of the Universidad de Salamanca (BGH).

In his mind, Wolfram Language is a fundamental tool. In the summer of 1999, he was a visiting scholar at Wolfram Research and since then has collaborated on prerelease test processes. Guillermo Sánchez also gives seminars and training courses on Mathematica. He is the author of the book Mathematica Beyond Mathematics: The Wolfram Language in the Real World, where he shares examples from his experience using and teaching Wolfram Language, and even has a radio program (EUREKA).

2022

Paul R. Garvey

Distinguished Chief Engineer/Scientist, The MITRE Corporation

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Data Analysis, Data Analytics, Economic Research and Analysis, Modeling Dynamical Systems with Mathematica, Risk Analysis, Risk Management, System Modeling

Paul R. Garvey is a distinguished chief engineer/scientist at The MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit organization operating federally funded research and development centers for the US government. He has decades of experience in systems operations research, network modeling, mission systems risk analyses, and the application of risk-decision analytics across a variety of problems in the federal government. His current work involves modeling the network structure of the US food supply chain, which is being done in collaboration with datasets and published studies by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) research team led by Professor Megan Konar.

Garvey has authored several textbooks, written numerous papers, holds a US patent, and continues to contribute his expertise and extensive Wolfram Language abilities to tackle big problems. One example is his work “US Food Supply Chain Security: A Network Analysis,” in conjunction with UIUC.

Utilizing Mathematica’s network modeling technologies, they identified critical US counties and links associated with the meat supply chain, which is characterized by 2,817 US counties (nodes) and 30,670 origin-to-destination links (edges) that exist between them.

2021

Virginia Tech Math Emporium

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Courseware Development, Education, Mathematics, Software Development

Virginia Tech’s Math Emporium was established over 20 years ago. Over the years, nearly eight thousand students have been served through the Math Emporium each semester, in courses ranging from precalculus to geometry and mathematics of design. Many peer institutions have adopted the emporium model, which uses computer-based resources and emphasizes active learning and retention. Mathematica has served as the foundation for Virginia Tech’s Math Emporium. Quiz questions are created as modules, allowing for thousands of variations for a single “question.” An in-house package has been built and expanded over the years, housing thousands of functions, from formatting to building XML files, for use in the Math Emporium testing system. Additionally, Mathematica has been used to create portions of the Math Emporium’s online textbooks and to conduct assessments for the department of mathematics.

Award accepted by Jessica Schmale, senior mathematics instructor.

2021

Scot Martin

Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Data Analysis, Data Science, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Physics

Scot Martin is currently a Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering and has previously held positions as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change at MIT. His research focuses on engineering solutions to the major environmental challenges presently facing the world. Scot’s laboratory works specifically on problems of air and water pollution and their effects on climate change. His current research has a focus on connections among plant emissions of volatile organic compounds, particle-phase secondary organic material and climate. Martin is currently working to complete a book on aerosol science and technology and is developing a HarvardX course on thermodynamics.

2021

Jang-Hoon Lee

Professor of Mathematics, Paju Girls' High School

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Computational Thinking, Education, Mathematics

Jang-Hoon Lee is a professor of mathematics at Paju Girls’ High School and the most famous Mathematica user in South Korea. He has introduced Wolfram’s software to millions of users and extensively incorporated it to his teaching. This includes developing an online Mathematica textbook for his students, called Mathematica LAB. He also opened the Mathought.com website and creates math content using Mathematica for Naver.com, where he has 20 thousand subscribers and 6.5 million cumulative views. Due to this and other initiatives, he has won the Korea Mathematics Education Award from the Ministry of Education of South Korea and the Science Teacher of the Year Award from the Ministry of Science and Technology Information and Communication of South Korea.

2021

Bruno Autin

President, Les Trois Platanes

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Computational Physics, Physics, Software Development

Bruno Autin started his professional life in the Laboratoire de Recherches Générales de la Compagnie Française Thomson Houston, where he studied the amplification of acoustic microwaves in cadmium sulfide. He strove to replace classical traveling wave tubes by tiny crystals, the scaling factor being the ratio between sound and light velocities. In 1967, he began working at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), where his research turned quickly towards subnuclear physics with the development of very-high-energy accelerators. Bruno started with the first proton collider, the Intersection Storage Rings (ISR), and became introduced to the design and operation of the magnetic systems of accelerators and colliders. The basic theory had been established by Ernest Courant, but matching the architecture of colliders to particle detectors was largely a process of trial and error depending on numerical computations. Finding this to be unsatisfactory, he started testing symbolic languages. The first achievement was the shape of the CERN antiproton source calculated with Veltman’s Schoonschip. The saga of the antiprotons continued both at CERN and at Fermilab. Then, during a sabbatical year at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he worked on the design of the Advanced Synchrotron Light Source, he tested the first release of Mathematica, which was packed with the NeXT computer. Having symbolics, numerics, graphics and the notebook interface convinced him to build two packages: Geometrica for geometry and BeamOptics for the investigation of optical systems adapted to projects such as beam emittance optimization for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), muon colliders, neutrino factories and medical synchrotrons. Now retired from CERN, he follows the progress of particle physics and writes particle accelerator documentation for Wolfram Research.

2020

William J. Turkel

The University of Western Ontario

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Computational Humanities, Education

William J. Turkel is a professor of history at The University of Western Ontario in Canada, whose research and teaching focuses on computational methods, digital humanities and the histories of science, technology and environment. He is a cofounder of the Programming Historian website and the author of Digital Research Methods with Mathematica, now in its second edition. He has been using Mathematica in his research since the mid-1990s and has been teaching courses with the language for eight years.

2018

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Scientific Advisor, Universa Investments

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Financial Risk, Probability Theory

Dr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a world-renowned researcher and author with dozens of published papers relating to the philosophical, mathematical and practical issues with probability, especially in the fields of financial risk and decision making. His multivolume work Incerto, which covers broad facets of uncertainty, has been translated into 37 languages. He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, with a focus on properties of “antifragile” systems whose functioning improves with disorder. Dr. Taleb has used Mathematica extensively in his work, including for research into non-idealized probabilistic decision-making models and computational pre-asymptotics.

2018

Aaron Santos

Data Scientist, EMC Insurance

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Computational Physics, Data Science, Industrial Engineering, Internet of Things, Nanotechnology, Risk Analysis

Dr. Santos is a data scientist, professor and author who uses Wolfram technology to advance data and device integration in a variety of sectors. He and his team at EMC Insurance have used the Wolfram Language and Wolfram Enterprise Private Cloud for valuable research analyzing data from IoT devices to help improve driver safety, reduce fuel consumption and identify worksite hazards. As part of a recent startup, Dr. Santos also worked on the development of a nanotechnology device for efficiently identifying the genetic makeup of food products, with future plans to integrate Wolfram Cloud technology to provide additional analytics and services to consumers.

2018

Nicholas Mecholsky

Research Scientist, Vitreous State Laboratory
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Catholic University of America

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Image Processing, Machine Learning, Nuclear Engineering, Optimization, Physics, System Modeling

Nicholas Mecholsky is a research scientist and professor focusing on optimization and physical modeling. In addition to demonstrating high-level math and physics concepts to his students with the Wolfram Language, he has utilized it in research publications on subjects ranging from animal flocks to autonomous cars to thermoelectric transfer. He is currently involved in a joint project with the US Department of Energy and Vitreous State Laboratory using Wolfram Language image processing and machine learning to model, analyze and predict crystallization phenomena in nuclear tank waste. The project has significantly improved the efficiency of vitrification (transformation into glass), helping to make safer nuclear waste storage a reality.

2018

Bruce Colletti

Operations Researcher, Cox Automotive Inc
Adjunct Professor, Northern Virginia Community College

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Defense Analysis, Education, Industrial Engineering, Mathematics, Operations Research, System Modeling

Dr. Colletti is an operations researcher and former Air Force major who has used Wolfram technologies extensively for research in defense and homeland security analysis. He used Mathematica to finish his dissertation on group theory, as well as for a number of subsequent publications over the following two decades. Consulting for many classified government projects, he utilizes the Wolfram Language and Wolfram SystemModeler to develop large-scale analytic models for personnel, logistics and program evaluation. Dr. Colletti has guided the research of eight master’s and doctoral students at several universities, and he has won awards for his work instructing mathematics courses with the Wolfram Language at Northern Virginia Community College.

2018

Abby Brown

Teacher of Mathematics, Torrey Pines High School (Department of Math)

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Calculus, Computational Thinking, Education, Mathematics Courseware Design

Abby Brown is a teacher at Torrey Pines High School. Over the last decade, she has used Wolfram technologies to develop and publish interactive course materials for high-school and junior-high mathematics. In addition to evangelizing the Wolfram Language to colleagues and students, Abby actively shares her course materials through a variety of websites. She has made numerous contributions to Computational Thinking Initiatives and has started the Computational Thinking Club at her school. Many of Abby’s former students go on to use the Wolfram Language for hackathons and university work.

2017

Andrew Yule

Flow Assurance Specialist, Assured Flow Solutions

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Chemical Engineering, Data Analytics, Fluid Dynamics

Andrew Yule is a flow assurance specialist at Assured Flow Solutions who developed an internal toolkit written entirely using the Wolfram Language and deployed it to his colleagues through EnterpriseCDF. Containing over 40 different calculations and workflows that are used daily throughout the company, this toolkit centralized Assured Flow Solutions utilities and has completely changed the way the entire organization views data analytics and visualizations. He also uses the Wolfram Cloud to deploy APIs that run calculations as a back end to Visual Basic UIs.

2017

Dr. Tarkeshwar Singh

Quantitative Analyst and Software Engineer, Quiet Light Securities

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Finance, Machine Learning, Risk Management

Dr. Singh is a quantitative analyst and software engineer at Quiet Light Securities and an early adopter of Wolfram Finance Platform. In conjunction with the CTO, Robert Maxwell, Dr. Singh brought Finance Platform on board to support daily derivative trading operations by developing extensive strategies and volatility surface models, as well as performing backtesting with intraday market tick data. He also provided daily snapshots of company-wide risk through CDF documents that provided insights and satisfied compliance requirements. He also developed an internal training program to bring quants up to speed with Wolfram technologies. In the future, he hopes to utilize the machine learning capabilities of the Wolfram Language to develop advanced trading algorithms through neural networks.

2017

Chris Reed

Aerospace Corporation

Areas: Aerospace, Applied Mathematics, Authoring and Publishing, Physics

Dr. Reed is an applied mathematician at Aerospace Corporation who uses Mathematica to identify and create various aerospace solutions specific to rocket and satellite design and testing. A certified instructor at Aerospace Corp., he has introduced many colleagues to Wolfram technologies through his classes, where it has become a staple for experimentation. Dr. Reed has two approved patents that involve solving nonlinear boundary-value problems and rely on the Wolfram Language’s modeling and visualization capabilities.

2017

Youngjoo Chung

Professor, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Education

Dr. Chung is a professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, and has created an extensive symbolic computing package for versatile manipulation of mathematical expressions using the Wolfram Language. His package includes over 800 functions ranging from basic algebra to functional analysis. The package also contains its own interpreter language, complete online documentation and two palettes for increased ease of execution. Additionally, Dr. Chung maintains the South Korean Mathematica Users group, and is a highly active member of the international community using Wolfram technologies.

2014

Bruce Torrence

Randolph-Macon College

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Authoring in Mathematica, Computer Graphics and Visual Arts, Computer-Aided Education, Education, Mathematics

Bruce Torrence is the author of numerous Mathematica books and articles including The Student’s Introduction to Mathematica, a popular general reference book for students and educators. In addition to publishing dozens of articles on the use of Mathematica in education and research, Torrence recently completed a five-year editorship at Math Horizons and is a Wolfram Science Summer School alumni.

2014

Yves Papegay

French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Computer Science, Education, Mathematics

Yves Papegay integrates new Wolfram technologies into his workflow and has used Wolfram Development Platform (formerly Wolfram Programming Cloud) and Mathematica on Raspberry Pi for his robotics projects. Papegay is also a Wolfram certified instructor and develops industrial Mathematica tools for C code generation in the aerospace and energy industries for companies including Airbus and French energy company, EDF.

2014

Prof. Richard J. Gaylord

University of Illinois

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Authoring in Mathematica, Biology, Computer Science, Computer-Aided Education, Education, Physics

Richard Gaylord is one of Mathematica’s earliest users and is a self-described evangelist for the Wolfram Language. He taught computer programming in the Wolfram Language at many universities, companies, government agencies, and scientific conferences for more than 25 years. He has co-authored several texts, including An Introduction to Programming with Mathematica, and three other books on programming computer simulations in a wide variety of fields using the Wolfram Language. Gaylord has made a three-part video explaining the fundamentals of the Wolfram Language.

2011

Debra Woods

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Computer Graphics and Visual Arts, Mathematics

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 »

2011

Stan Wagon

Macalester College

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Computer Graphics and Visual Arts, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering

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 »

2011

Eric Schulz & Pearson Education

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Education, Interface Design, Mathematics

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 »

2011

Diego Oviedo-Salcedo

Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana Bucaramanga

Areas: Authoring and Publishing, Mathematics, Structural Engineering

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.