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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

2019 Faculty

Directors

Kyle Keane

Program Director

Kyle Keane is currently a full-time lecturer at MIT and part-time consultant at Wolfram in the Outreach & Communications department. Kyle was a research programmer in the Special Projects department of Wolfram Research from 2012–2015, where he worked on establishing K–12 programming initiatives, including developing a general step-by-step physics and equation solver in Wolfram|Alpha and helping Siri speak Wolfram|Alpha results. His main areas of interest are the pedagogical effectiveness of interactive graphics, evidence-based infusion of programming into science education, improving the accessibility of technology for people with disabilities and user experience. Kyle has a PhD from the University of California, Riverside, where his dissertation was on utilizing weak quantum measurements to protect quantum systems from information loss during quantum computing.

YEARS:

 2019  |  2018  |  2013

Mads Bahrami

Academic Director

Mads Bahrami joined Wolfram in 2018. He is interested in developing computational paradigm for any field of research, in particular, STEM education, religion, etc. Mads received his PhD in physical chemistry from Sharif University of Technology. His field of research is the foundation of quantum theory and quantum stochastic processes. He did his postdoctoral research in the EU under a Marie Curie fellowship and also in the US at the University of California, Riverside. Mads is also a lecturer of general chemistry, physical chemistry and quantum theory at different universities and community colleges in Los Angeles.

YEARS:

 2019

Carol Cronin

Admissions 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:

 2019  |  2018  |  2017  |  2016  |  2015  |  2014  |  2013  |  2012

Instructors

Zhamilya Bilyalova

Zhamilya Bilyalova is a rising senior at the Princeton International School of Math and Science, where she was first introduced to data science and machine learning and has been using the Wolfram Language for various projects, like computational farming. She grew up in Kazakhstan and immigrated to the US three years ago. Throughout high school, she has participated in math competitions and a Zero Robotics competition and is the president of a PERIOD chapter. She is interested in investigating the consequences that data collection and mining has had on her generation, especially migrant youth. She participated in the Wolfram Summer School as a student working on a machine learning and linguistics project. Zhamilya is excited to share her passion for the Wolfram Language with Summer Research Program students.

YEARS:

 2019

Lauren Cooper

Lauren is currently studying physics and materials science with a focus in mathematics at MIT. She is particularly interested in surface science and interfaces. She is eager to help others learn, as she is a Cambridge Math Volunteer and offers free breakdance workshops to the MIT community. Her favorite activities are dancing with MIT Bhangra, playing the piano and taking photographs of the stars.

YEARS:

 2019

Rory Foulger

Rory joined Wolfram in 2019 as the Education Outreach Coordinator. Rory recently graduated as part of the first graduating class at Minerva Schools, where they studied computational sciences alongside a broad, problem-based curriculum. Rory is passionate about education and youth justice, as well as decision science, problem solving and technology. Outside of work, you can usually find Rory reading about radical pedagogy, debating political ideology with anyone who’ll listen, lighting bonfires, carving wooden toys or thinking up new strategies to win at board games.

YEARS:

 2019

Harshal Gajjar

Harshal Gajjar is an undergrad student at the Indian Institute of Technology Dharwad majoring in computer science and engineering. His interests include exploratory programming, image processing, machine learning, UI design and cycling. He has contributed to several institute projects and has also delivered software to companies. He is also an alumni of the Wolfram Summer School, where he developed a function to tile polyominoes.

YEARS:

 2019

Eryn Gillam

Eryn Gillam is an undergraduate currently studying materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In recent coursework, Eryn was introduced to Mathematica as an academic tool. Following her passion for education and new interest in the Wolfram Language, she is involved in developing new educational content for Mathematica at MIT. Besides academics, Eryn spends time working on theater productions, usually designing lights or as a member of the directorial staff.

YEARS:

 2019

Sylvia Haas

Sylvia graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science and statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was the outreach chair for Women in Computer Science. She joined the Wolfram PR team earlier this year. She enjoys data visualizations, recursion, attempting to watch every movie ever made and spending time with her little black cat Jiji.

YEARS:

 2019

Katja Della Libera

Katja is a rising junior at Minerva Schools at KGI, double majoring in computer science and environmental sciences.

After attending the Wolfram Summer School in 2018, she worked for Minerva's computational sciences department on integrating the Wolfram Language into the curriculum. Her favorite part of the job was mentoring other students learning the Wolfram Language from scratch, and she is excited to come back to the Wolfram Summer Programs as a TA.

In her free time, Katja enjoys birdwatching, cooking and musical theater.

YEARS:

 2019

Christian Pasquel

Christian Pasquel was part of the first group to join the Wolfram Research South America offices in Lima, Peru, in 2012. He has a physics background and worked on research during his first professional years. He currently manages the South America Connectivity group, working on connecting the Wolfram Language to external services and different blockchains. His interests include evolutionary biology, astrobiology, artificial intelligence, music, films, books, playing with data and everything tech related. A self-proclaimed Wolfram fan, he works on different personal original projects using Mathematica. He is a cat lover and had the main part in an official music video available online.

YEARS:

 2019  |  2018  |  2017  |  2016

Jeremy Stratton-Smith

Jeremy joined Wolfram in 2018 as a math content developer for Wolfram|Alpha and has worked primarily on applications of integration and step-by-step solutions. Jeremy holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Middlebury College and worked as a high-school math teacher between graduating and starting at Wolfram. With interests ranging from topology and abstract algebra to gender studies, Jeremy is a strong advocate for equity and access in mathematics education. In their free time, Jeremy likes to travel, cook, read and spend time in nature.

YEARS:

 2019

Emma Yang

Emma Yang is a rising high-school junior from New York City. Emma has been a mentee of the Wolfram Research Mentorships Program since 2016 and is a proud alumna of the 2017 Wolfram High School Summer Research Program. One of the highlights in her "Wolfram" career was representing Wolfram Research in the White House's Opportunity Project in bringing the power of the Wolfram Language to solve problems using open data. In the past few years, under the guidance of her mentor, Emma has been learning and using the Wolfram Language in many different projects ranging from using computer vision to identify road signs to developing neural networks to detect lung cancer with 95%+ accuracy.

Emma loves to code, and she is madly fascinated by the intersection of technology and health care. Besides being a Wolfram Language enthusiast, Emma is also the founder of Timeless, a mobile app that empowers Alzheimer's patients to stay connected with their loved ones. (You can check it out in the app store!) In her free time, Emma enjoys watching movies, traveling and reading science and historical fiction. Her favorite books are Foundation by Isaac Asimov, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. She also loves the webcomic xkcd for its whimsical combination of science and internet culture.

Emma is excited to share her Wolfram Language and computer science experience with this year's Summer Research Program participants and is also looking forward to learning from everyone's interest and experience.

YEARS:

 2019

Faizon Zaman

Fez joined Wolfram|Alpha's Data Curation department as a Linguistics Curator in the fall of 2018. He graduated with a BS in cognitive science from SUNY Oswego, with minors in computer science and audio production and design. Fez is passionate about creating—really anything. His main mediums are music and visual art, and he has ultimately found the nexus of his interests in digital humanities. He is also a Wolfram Summer School alumni. In 2016, he worked on speaker diarization, and in 2018, he developed a basic import/export system between the Wolfram Language and Twine.

YEARS:

 2019