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Wolfram High School
Summer Research Program

Formerly known as the Wolfram High School Summer Camp

Bentley University, Boston, MA June 25–July 13, 2024

2012 Faculty

Directors

Crystal Fantry

Program Director

Crystal Fantry joined Wolfram in 2009. She holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and education from Stonehill College and a master's degree in mathematics from Boston College. Crystal is a certified math teacher by the Massachusetts Department of Education and has multiple years of teaching experience at the high-school and college levels. She currently teaches upper school math at Beaver Country Day School and continues to work with Wolfram on educational initiatives and Mathematica Summer Research Program. Her passion for mathematics started at a very young age and continues to grow.

YEARS:

 2014  |  2013  |  2012

Catherine Boucher

Program Director

Catherine Boucher joined Wolfram in 1998. She is currently the Executive Director of Special Projects for Wolfram. Her team is responsible for early development of new initiatives at Wolfram including those focused on K–12 education. She and her team led the original development of Wolfram|Alpha and currently handle its mathematical content, parser development, and partnerships. She is also a founding director for the Wolfram Foundation. Catherine received her PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

YEARS:

 2016  |  2015  |  2014  |  2013  |  2012

Carol Cronin

Event Director

Carol Cronin joined Wolfram in 1996 and leads the program administration for educational initiatives, including Wolfram Sponsorships, the Wolfram Foundation, and the Wolfram Summer Programs. She attended Eastern Illinois University and has six kids. She is a court-appointed special advocate and guardian ad litem for foster children in her community, and has served on her school district's Teaching and Learning Advisory Committee.

YEARS:

 2017  | 2016  |  2015  |  2014  |  2013  |  2012

Instructors

Peter Barendse

Peter Barendse attended the University of Vermont and received his PhD in mathematics from Boston University in 2010. The topic of his doctoral dissertation was combinatorial large cardinal hypotheses. He has published articles online and in The Journal of the Mathematical Society of Japan.

His scholarly interests are mathematical logic, dynamical systems, theoretical computer science, physics, philosophy and economics. Besides these, he enjoys teaching, playing sports, debating, watching and making movies and traveling.

YEARS:

 2012

Erin Craig

Erin Craig graduated from New College of Florida with a BA in mathematics. Inspired by the beauty of both algebra and automata, she spent her final year of college at University of California, Berkeley exploring a class of cellular automata over 2n colors that have a relationship to the dihedral groups. Erin attended the NKS Summer School in 2009, where she explored reducibility of string substitution systems. She joined Wolfram Research as a software developer in 2009, and now leads the team developing math content for Wolfram|Alpha.

YEARS:

 2014  |  2013  |  2012

Special Lecturer

Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, the author of A New Kind of Science, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Having started in science as a teenager (he got his PhD at age 20), Wolfram had a highly successful career in academia before founding Wolfram Research.

Wolfram has a lifelong committment to education, and has been actively involved in mentoring young students, as well as in developing new techniques for the classroom. At the Summer School, he will lecture and lead discussion sessions.

YEARS:

 2014  |  2013  |  2012

Teaching Assistants

Matthew Hoek

Matthew Hoek teaches high-school mathematics at Columbia Prep School in New York City. He has taught there for nine years and uses Mathematica in the classroom. Matt earned a BS in math and physics from St. Lawrence University. He enjoys patterns and puzzles, and he's excited to be part of the Summer Research Program.

YEARS:

 2014  |  2013  |  2012

Mark Lawton

Mark Lawton has twenty years of experience utilizing technology in the teaching of math and physics.

Mark has a master's degree in engineering from University of California, Berkeley and a master's of liberal arts from St John's College, as well as two undergraduate degrees from Syracuse University. Mark enjoys kiteboarding, rock-climbing, cycling, and creative writing.

YEARS:

 2012

Michael Sollami

Michael Sollami is currently a research programmer in the Applied Research Group at Wolfram Research. He finished his masters and doctorate in pure mathematics at the University of Wyoming and is now working on various aspects of Wolfram|Alpha and future versions of Mathematica. His interests include music theory, complexity theory, and approximation algorithms.

YEARS:

 2012

Christopher Wolfram

Christopher Wolfram is a full-stack programmer and algorithm developer who has been programming in the Wolfram Language since a young age. He has been the lead developer for several built-in Wolfram Language functions (including Nearest and Encrypt), as well as for Tweet-a-Program and several of his own apps. He has presented at SXSW, Maker Faire, livecoding.tv and other venues on topics such as machine learning, data science and IoT programming. Christopher enjoys 3D modeling, Haskell, Swift, history, tennis and traveling. He has been a mentor in the Wolfram Summer Programs for five years.

YEARS:

 2016  |  2015  |  2014  |  2013  |  2012

Guest Speakers

Eric Rowland

Vitaliy Kaurov