Stephen Wolfram presented the second annual Wolfram Innovator Awards at the 2012 Wolfram Technology Conference to honor individuals who have made significant contributions to their industry or field of science. Nominated by Wolfram employees and selected by a panel of Wolfram technology experts, this year’s winners are: Craig W. Carter, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT Robert B. Nachbar, Mathematician, Chemist, and Biologist at Merck Research Laboratories Thomas Roux, Financial Risk Manager at BRED Banque Populaire Rubén Berrocal and Marisa Talavera, National Secretary for Science and Technology and Director of Innovation in Learning (respectively), Panama Government Richard Anderson, Computer Scientist Fred Szabo, Mathematics and Statistics Professor, Concordia University

The recent Wolfram Mathematica Virtual Conference was a tremendous success! The free event included two tracks of talks covering applications of Mathematica in industry and research and in education, Q&A with experts, and access to virtual networking. From building graphics and dynamic visualizations to learning creative ways for using the Computable Document Format (CDF) in the classroom, attendees of all experience levels gained new insights to help them get the most out of the Mathematica platform.

The release of A New Kind of Science in 2002 generated all sorts of excitement, which was reflected at our first Summer School in 2003. Since then, the projects students worked on have been closely related to the book, but this year marked a change, with an increased scope and a new name: Wolfram Science Summer School.

Mathematica users around the world answered our call to prove their programming prowess in our recent Mathematica Experts Live: One-Liner Competition. And once again, we were blown away by what our users did with just 140 characters or less of Mathematica code. Videos from the webcast where we revealed the winner and runners-up are now available in our Screencast & Video Gallery and on YouTube. Check them out to see the creative applications the honorees came up with: from transforming a sphere into a cow to random sound generators to a world capitals quiz to the highly impressive grand prize winner. You're sure to learn some new Mathematica tricks and techniques from each entry.

Get an edge in everything from computer graphics to deploying interactive reports to using Wolfram|Alpha in the classroom. Whether you're new to Mathematica or an expert, the free Wolfram Mathematica Virtual Conference 2012 will help you get the most out of the platform. Two tracks of conference talks cover applications of Mathematica in industry and research and in education. Each talk includes a live Q&A session.

In November 2011 we held the first Computer-Based Math Education Summit in London. Over two days we brought an unprecedented cross-section of people with a stake in STEM education to address the question "In an era of ubiquitous computing, how should we rebuild math education from the ground up, to keep pace with and drive progress in the real world?" Last year's summit was a first glimpse at some of the work from the computer-based math community worldwide. The Computer-Based Math Education Summit 2012, again being held in London, will be tackling more of these issues in a mainstream way. If you want to have a stake in math education in 10 years' time, this summit is unmissable.

Did you know that we have more than 600 videos and screencasts that highlight (and help you get started with) different features of Mathematica and other Wolfram technologies? You've probably seen a number of them across our websites or on our YouTube channels. But now, it's easier than ever to explore the full collection—thanks to our newly redesigned Wolfram Screencast & Video Gallery.

Wolfram Research today announced the winner of its first Demonstrations competition as Michael Lawson from Ermysted's Grammar School, North Yorkshire, with runners-up Patrick Stevens, Woodbridge School, Suffolk and David Harris, St. Dunstan's College, London. Michael's Demonstration, "Recursive Dungeon Generator," was a particularly good showcase for applications of programming---in this instance, for game design. "I was working on creating my own Rogue-like game, and I was experimenting with different ways to generate rooms. This was one of my own algorithm ideas," said Michael, who, although he has been programming for four years, only started using Mathematica recently. "I actually only learned how to use Mathematica for the purpose of the competition. I started creating my demo after having only watched a few of the videos recommended for entrants, and then finished about four days later!" All three of the winning entries are published on the Wolfram Demonstrations Project site alongside 8,000 other user-created programs. "Recursive Dungeon Generation” "Semitones In Pythagorean Tuning and 12 Tone Equal Temperament” "Sorting Algorithms” The idea of the competition was to promote the application of programming in schools and support the UK government initiative to bring programming into schools.