Wolfram Innovator Award 2019

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.

Flip Phillips

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.

Robert Rasmussen and Kirk Reinholtz

Areas: Aerospace, Control Engineering, High-Performance and Parallel Computing, Probability Theory, Risk Analysis, Software Development, Systems Engineering

Robert Rasmussen and Kirk Reinholtz are systems engineers who have used the Wolfram Language to develop a set of methodologies for building complex control system applications. Their integrated mission operation systems utilize the Wolfram Language to provide live updates to local data stores, keeping information consistent throughout processes. Both have used Mathematica extensively for large probability and engineering computations—including hundred-day distributed computations and the processing of gigabyte-scale datasets. They evangelize Mathematica and the Wolfram Language to others in the aerospace field, encouraging them to use Wolfram Notebooks for exploration and the expression of ideas.