Each year, Wolfram seeks out computational innovators and honors their work during the Wolfram Technology Conference with the Wolfram Innovator Awards. It is a pleasure to see creativity and technology concentrated in these projects that break boundaries and push others to ask “What’s possible?”

Without further ado, we present and congratulate the 2024 Wolfram Innovator Award winners.

Andrew Lütken

Technology Innovation Institute (TII)

After obtaining his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, Andrew Lütken worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita), the University of Oxford, Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies (IFAE) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the University of Oslo, where he has been a professor of physics for 30 years. He is now the executive director of the Quantum Computing Lab at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi.

Lütken has used Wolfram extensively in particle physics, quantum field theory and the analysis of ground state strings (the construction and classification of Calabi–Yau manifolds). Together with the late Graham Ross (University of Oxford), he has shown that a new type of “modular” symmetry appears in nature (in the quantum Hall effect). He has recently built the first quantum computing lab in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, including a chip foundry that has fabricated the first quantum computers in this part of the world.

Robert Feger, Thomas Kephart, Robert Saskowski

Developers of LieART

Robert Feger, Cocreator of LieART and Researcher, Deutscher Wetterdienst

Robert Feger is a researcher and developer at the Deutscher Wetterdienst, Germany’s national meteorological service, specializing in thunderstorm and convection detection in weather radar data. As a particle theorist, he used Wolfram extensively in his PhD studies on heavy-quark physics at the University of Siegen. During his postdoctoral fellowship by the German Academic Exchange Service at Vanderbilt University, Feger worked on grand unified theories based on special unitary groups. His research required fast and demanding calculations in group theory. Initially created as a group theory toolbox for personal use, Feger, mentored by Tom Kephart, created LieART, a Wolfram application for Lie algebras and representation theory. LieART has been appreciated by particle physicists and mathematicians for its user-friendly interface and computational power covering all classical and exceptional Lie algebras. It can also be used as a group theory teaching tool as the output and visualizations, e.g. of Dynkin diagrams and weight and root systems, are akin to textbooks—all enabled by the very same core principles of Wolfram.

Thomas Kephart, Cocreator of LieART and Professor of Physics, Vanderbilt University

Thomas Kephart is a particle theorist and has worked on formal aspects of gauge theories, particle physics models and group theory. Some topics include chiral gauge anomalies, topological defects and extensions of the standard model, including grand unification, family symmetry, discrete symmetry and string-inspired models. Wolfram has been an indispensable tool in his research for many years. The applications have ranged from particle physics model building to the classification of quantum entanglement to theoretical biophysics.

Many branches of science seem poised for great advances as machine learning, artificial intelligence and quantum computing converge. Most recently, in a study of coherent states from the solar corona, Kephart has used AI to write Wolfram Language code to analyze the signal-to-noise ratio expected in detectors. He also finds Wolfram a great help in mentoring students, as by learning to use it, they can quickly make useful contributions to research projects.

Robert Saskowski, Cocreator of LieART and Researcher, Tianjin University

Robert Saskowski is a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Joint Quantum Studies at Tianjin University studying string theory and related topics. He specializes in higher-derivative supergravity and precision holography. His undergraduate thesis involved working on LieART, a powerful Wolfram application for doing computations with Lie algebras and their representation theory, and implementing branching rules therein.

Michael Berry

Melville Wills Professor of Physics (Emeritus), University of Bristol

Michael Berry is a theoretical physicist at the University of Bristol, where he has been for more than twice as long as he has not. His research centers on the relations between physical theories at different levels of description (classical and quantum physics, ray optics and wave optics), emphasizing the singularities at different levels. Wolfram has been his tool of choice for all the numerics and graphics in nearly two hundred research papers since 1988. In addition to these deeply mathematical, often geometric studies, he also delights in finding familiar phenomena illustrating deep concepts—the arcane in the mundane: rainbows, the sparkling of the sun on the sea, twinkling starlight, polarized light in the sky and tidal bores.

Mauro Da Lio

Professor, Università degli Studi di Trento

Mauro Da Lio is a full professor of mechanical systems at the Università degli Studi di Trento, Italy. He has been a long-time user of Mathematica since Version 6, notably using it in earlier research of modeling, simulation and optimal control of mechanical multibody systems, particularly vehicle and spacecraft dynamics. More recently, his focus shifted to modeling human sensory-motor control with applications in health, robotics and, mostly, intelligent vehicles.

He was involved in several EU framework program projects (PREVENT, Saferider, interactIVe, VERITAS, AdaptIVe, No-Tremor and SUNRISE). Professor Da Lio was the coordinator of the EU Horizon 2020 Dreams4Cars research and innovation action: a collaborative project in the robotics domain that aimed at increasing the cognition abilities of artificial driving agents using offline simulation mechanisms broadly inspired by the human dream state (the learning of forward models and offline synthesis of inverse ones).

Thomas Wallek

Associate Professor, Graz University of Technology

Thomas Wallek’s area of expertise is chemical thermodynamics and its application in chemical and process engineering, for which he uses Wolfram as an essential standard tool for both research and teaching. In his research, he focuses on thermodynamic modeling, the estimation of physical property data, the characterization of complex mixtures and molecular simulations.

In this context, his workgroup has been developing a Gibbs-ensemble Monte Carlo simulation program completely implemented in Wolfram, which is constantly being further developed and benefits from the diverse visualization and evaluation capabilities of Wolfram Language. In the context of teaching, Wallek is committed to the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Marketplace initiative of Graz University of Technology that focuses on the development and scaling of TEL innovations for teaching. In particular, Wolfram Notebooks were created as the basis of a chemical thermodynamics course that was designed in the “inverted classroom” concept and enables students to acquire the material independently through self-study. For this purpose, manipulable diagrams and animated equations were integrated into the notebooks, with which students can interact and learn independently.

Pedro Fonseca

SUEZ

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.

Sebastian Mizera

Princeton University

Sebastian Mizera is a theoretical physicist studying quantum field theory and gravitational physics. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and an affiliate at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science and the Institute for Advanced Study. His research aims to understand the nature of interactions between fundamental objects, ranging from elementary particles to black holes. He is particularly interested in how physical principles, such as causality, locality and unitarity, are encoded in the analytic structure of asymptotic observables in quantum field theory.

Wolfram Language is the bedrock of symbolic computations in the field of theoretical high-energy physics. Mizera employs it in his daily research on quantum field theory, but also in higher education. Recently, he incorporated Wolfram Language in the graduate course Physics of the Analytic S-Matrix given at the Higgs Centre School of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh. The software was used to illustrate complex concepts behind scattering theory on hands-on examples.

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

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.

José Guillermo Sánchez León

Instituto Universitario de Física Fundamental y Matemáticas

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).

Héctor Benítez Pérez

IIMAS-DGTIC Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Dr. Héctor Benítez Pérez graduated with honors in electrical mechanical engineering from the Faculty of Engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and pursued his doctorate at the University of Sheffield in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering. Within UNAM, he served as the head of the Institute for Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS) from 2012 to 2020 and is currently the head of the General Directorate of Computing and Information and Communication Technologies (DGTIC). Additionally, he serves as a representative to various official organizations, both national and international.

Benítez Pérez has worked as a researcher in the field of control systems. He has played a pivotal role in organizing UNAM systemwide Wolfram training and communication events, providing invaluable opportunities for students, faculty, and researchers to advance their work in science and technology. His contribution to academic training is highlighted by the creation of the bachelor’s degree in data science, the specialty in high-performance computing and its integration into UNAM’s Continuing Education Network (REDEC), which formalizes collaboration in continuing education activities and has led to the offering of a course at the IIMAS Academic Unit in the state of Yucatán.

In collaboration with IIMAS, the UNAM Institute of Mathematics, Centro Virtual de Computación (CViCom), the French Embassy in México, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Huawei México and the German Cooperation Agency, he has participated in organizing forums, workshops and meetings aimed at promoting research development in México in the field of artificial intelligence. He has supported many Wolfram training and communication events. His efforts have offered room for students, faculty and researchers space to continue research in science and technology.

Europa Clipper Technical Resources Modeling Team

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

David Wagner, Andres Rivera, Emma Dodd, Narek Shougarian, David Coren and Reidar Larsen, members of the Europa Clipper project system engineering team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of Technology), used Wolfram Language and System Modeler as part of a large multiphysics simulation system used to validate requirements against performance of the design of the spacecraft intended to probe subsurface water on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Analysis provided by these models enabled the project to zero in on a workable design for an extremely complex mission and validate that it could achieve the mission’s aggressive requirements. The models continue to be used to validate mission plan updates into operations.

Congratulations to these winners! We look forward to seeing your continued work carrying on computational excellence.