WOLFRAM

Wolfram Innovator Award

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

We recognize these deserving recipients with the Wolfram Innovator Award, which is awarded at the Wolfram Technology Conferences around the world.

Presented at the Wolfram Technology Conferences. Learn more

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

J. William Helton

Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, University of California San Diego

Areas: Geometry, Mathematics, Software Engineering

J. William Helton’s group developed the package NCAlgebra for doing general-purpose noncommutative algebra in Mathematica. It began around 1990 and has been extended continually since then. From his work at the origins of noncommutative geometry and H-infinity control, Helton kept seeing such noncommutative formulas and hoping computer algebra could help. So, with Bob Miller, he started NCAlgebra and developed algorithms to find out. Around the year 2000, linear control theory shifted away from equalities to inequalities, e.g. from Riccati equations to linear matrix inequalities. This motivated Helton and a few others to begin what has developed into an elegant theory of noncommutative inequalities, to wit, a noncommutative version of real algebraic geometry. NCAlgebra seriously accelerated (and was accelerated by) this development.

A booming area full of noncommutative algebra is quantum information theory, and that is the main direction of current NCAlgebra development. Major contributions to NCAlgebra are being made by Mauricio de Oliveira and have also come from Mark Stankus and from many University of California San Diego students.

2022

Tetsuo Ida

Professor Emeritus, University of Tsukuba

Areas: Computational Humanities, Geometry, Software Development

Tetsuo Ida is a professor emeritus in the department of computer science and faculty of engineering, informatics and systems for the University of Tsukuba.

Ida contributed greatly to expanding the use of computation in art, and is a pioneer of computational origami in particular. He and his team treat origami as a subject of art and a science and technology of shapes. They developed a software system called Eos (E-origami system) to reason about origami computationally. Eos is written in Wolfram Language and is available as a package for Mathematica.

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