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).

2024

Pedro Fonseca

SUEZ

Areas: Computational Thinking, Engineering, Image Processing

Pedro Fonseca earned his degree in environmental engineering with a specialization in sanitary engineering from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal. He has since built an international career focused on the detailed engineering of water treatment plants within the SUEZ Group, with professional experiences in Paris, France; Virginia, United States; and Lisbon, Portugal. Since 2012, Fonseca has managed the hydraulic discipline, contributing significantly to the research and development of new products and leading the basic and detailed hydraulic design of water treatment plants around the world.

Fonseca’s passion for education drives his engagement with Wolfram Language, which he first encountered in 2006 (Version 5.2) while pursuing a second degree in applied mathematics. Over the years, he has integrated Wolfram technologies, including Mathematica and System Modeler, into various aspects of his work and personal projects. These tools play a crucial role in his product development efforts, such as data mining, algorithm development and the creation of digital twins for design verification and optimization. Fonseca has also actively participated in multiple Wolfram Research activities, primarily in France, including boot camps, summer schools and product demonstrations.

2024

Fei Du

Associate Professor of Accountancy, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Associate Academic Director, Center for Professional Responsibility in Business and Society

Areas: Accounting Analysis, Computational Thinking, Data Analytics, Financial Analysis

Fei Du is an associate professor of accountancy at the Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on the interaction between users and designers of managerial accounting systems and has been published in top academic journals, including The Accounting Review, the Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Research, the Academy of Management Journal and the Journal of Management Accounting Research.

Du teaches courses in data analytics at the graduate level, emphasizing computational thinking and decision making. She leverages Wolfram Language for its powerful capabilities in accessing curated financial and socioeconomic data, which complements traditional accounting metrics. She also integrates real-world capital market events, news and case studies to enhance students’ understanding of business insights.

Du is also the author of Creative Data Analytics: Computational Recipes to Gain Insights into Businesses, published by Wolfram Media. This book features a mouse-driven interface that allows students to input data—ranging from website URLs to images and PDF files—and generate real-time computational results. Her innovative teaching approach integrates text and images from websites, CEO portraits and financial reports, blending traditional financial spreadsheet tools with advanced computational capabilities powered by Wolfram Language.

2023

Oliver Knill

Preceptor and Digital Media Specialist, Harvard University

Areas: Computational Thinking, Education, Geometry, Mathematics

Mathematica is vital to Oliver Knill’s teaching and research. In teaching, it produces professional graphics for handouts, facilitates visualizations and animations, and serves as a platform for innovative student projects. It’s also essential for vetting assignments and examples, enabling a quick search for appropriate problems for both homework and exams. Knill has employed it to design 3D printable objects, generate high-resolution animations and illustrate musical concepts like Markov chain–generated music.

In his research, Knill’s primary laboratory is Mathematica. Currently, he is delving deeper into discrete geometry, probability, spectral theory and linear algebra. He is thrilled about uncovering previously undiscovered relationships and enhancing proofs with code. This allows any curious individual to explore the underlying structure. Mathematica code is close to natural language, acting as a runnable pseudocode. While examples can elucidate a theorem, providing code that showcases it using random structures is not only thrilling but also validates the result’s efficacy.

2023

Sandipan Bandyopadhyay

Associate Professor, IIT Madras

Areas: Computational Thinking, Education, Physics

Sandipan Bandyopadhyay is an educator and researcher in the fields of mechanisms and robotics. He specializes in theoretical and computational kinematics, in particular in the domain of spatial parallel manipulators, such as the Stewart platform.

Bandyopadhyay’s research involves highly demanding symbolic computations, for which he finds a trusted partner in Mathematica. In at least 20 of his journal publications, the symbolic capabilities of Mathematica have played a significant role. Moreover, the flexibility of Wolfram Language has allowed him to develop algorithms and modules to explore deeper into algebraic geometry and kinematics and create customized tools for analyzing problems using hyper-complex numbers, such as dual numbers and dual quaternions. He uses the dynamic visualization capabilities of Mathematica to bring virtual robots to life, enabling his students to manipulate them and develop a better understanding of complicated motions of constrained multibody systems.

2022

Laurent Simon

Professor of Chemical Engineering and Vice Provost for Undergrad Studies, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Areas: Biomedical Research, Chemical Engineering, Computational Thinking, Pharmaceutical, Research and Analysis

Laurent Simon is a professor of chemical engineering and the vice provost for undergraduate studies at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Simon’s current research focuses on transdermal drug delivery, protein purification, process modeling and control; these projects involve writing Wolfram Language code that is instrumental in building population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models and designing transdermal drug-delivery systems. These same research tools, deployed with webMathematica, are now used to enhance chemical engineering curricula with applications in biological engineering.

2022

William A. Sethares

Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Areas: Computational Humanities, Computational Thinking, Computer-Aided Education, Courseware Development, Engineering, Image and Signal Processing, Image Processing, Signal Processing

Bill Sethares is a researcher and professor of electrical and computer engineering at the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, focusing on signal processing with applications in acoustics, image processing, communications and optimization.

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Sethares attracts students from majors beyond engineering with his computationally rich image processing course material and project-based learning (all Wolfram Language–based, of course!). Sethares is a founding member of the LEOcode project and brings computation to art historians in the form of applications used to find patterns in watermarks and canvases. These can help to identify and date historical papers and paintings.

2022

The Geva Research Group, Compute-to-Learn Project

University of Michigan Ann Arbor, accepted by Ellen Mulvihill

Areas: Chemistry, Computational Thinking, Computer-Aided Education, Courseware Development, Education

The Compute-to-Learn project provides students with the opportunity to engage in creative forms of active learning. Compute-to-Learn activities stem from evidence-based, student-centered learning approaches, such as emphasis on real-world applications to promote students’ integration of new ideas, as well as authentic, collaborative environments that apprentice students as members of a scientific discipline (via practices such as explanatory writing and peer review). Students participate in tutorials and training related to Mathematica; research and propose an original Demonstration idea; workshop the idea during design and production stages; and, finally, submit the final product to external review prior to publication and dissemination on the Wolfram Demonstrations Project website. The Compute-to-Learn pedagogy is implemented within a peer-led honors studio environment. It has been offered in the University of Michigan chemistry department since 2015.

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

Dr. Girish Arabale

Founding Director, Scigram Technologies Foundation

Areas: Computational Thinking, Education, Software Development

Dr. Arabale is the founding director of Scigram Technologies Foundation, a not-for-profit education organization seeking to introduce a tinkering culture into the schools to foster creativity, excitement and innovation in science learning. At Scigram, Dr. Arabale teaches underprivileged children how to program using the Raspberry Pi. He also frequently speaks to children at the K–12 level to teach coding techniques using the Wolfram Language. Currently, Dr. Arabale is developing a computational learning platform and is working on a project known as “Computable City” that aims to make every aspect of the city’s ecosystem computable.

2019

Flip Phillips

Professor of Motion Picture Science, Rochester Institute of Technology

Areas: Computational Humanities, Computational Thinking, Computer Graphics and Visual Arts, Education, Machine Learning

Flip Phillips is a professor, researcher and former Pixar animation scientist who uses Wolfram technology to integrate real-world computation into his psychology and neuroscience curriculum. Through his course, students get unique hands-on experience with computational thinking and machine learning, completing cross-disciplinary projects ranging from predicting voter behavior to identifying fruit from sensor readings. Phillips makes use of Wolfram connected devices for gathering data and frequently publishes his work in the Wolfram Cloud. He has used Mathematica extensively for his research on perception, psychological aesthetics and cortical plasticity. He has also written several packages for extending the Wolfram Language’s rendering capabilities.

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.