Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram is the author of A New Kind of Science and the principal lecturer at the Summer School. He is the creator of Mathematica, the creator of Wolfram|Alpha 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 early career in academia. He began his work on NKS in 1981 and spent ten years writing the NKS book, published in 2002. Over the course of 30 years, Wolfram has mentored a large number of individuals who have achieved great success in academia, business and elsewhere. Starting the NKS Summer School (now called the Wolfram Summer School) was his first formal educational undertaking in 16 years.

Xerxes Arsiwalla

Fundamental Physics Director

Xerxes is a theoretical physicist. He worked on black holes and string theory during grad school. He did his postdoctoral research in computational neuroscience and complex systems. In addition to fundamental physics, he is interested in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. He also maintains an interest in the problem of consciousness and intelligence, particularly in mathematical approaches to the mind-body problem.

John McNally

Science & Tech Director

John McNally joined Wolfram Research in 2022. He received his BS in physics and MEd in curriculum and instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Wolfram Research, John taught mathematics and physics for K–12 students, where he strove to make concepts from university courses and research accessible to a wider audience. He has also coached for the Beamline for Schools program in area schools. While teaching, John became interested in computational thinking as an organizing principle for education and as an important future skill for students. Aside from education, he maintains an avid hobbyist’s interest in high-energy physics, cosmology, economics and deep learning.

Paul Abbott

Educational Innovation Director

Paul Abbott is an adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia. He obtained his PhD in theoretical atomic physics from UWA in 1987, worked for Wolfram Research from 1989–1992 and has been a Wolfram consultant and instructor since 1997. Paul was the founding technical editor of The Mathematical Journal in 1990 and was a columnist until 2010. His interests range from computational physics, applied mathematics and special functions to courseware design. All of his research and teaching since 1985 has used Wolfram technologies in some way, and his work has been recognized most recently by a Wolfram Innovator Award in 2015 and an Australian University Teaching Award in 2016. In his spare time, Paul enjoys cycling, walking, swimming, photography, reading and writing.

Alejandra Ortiz

NKS and Ruliology Track Director

Alejandra Ortiz is an applied mathematician currently working at Wolfram in the Discrete Computation team as a Computational Graphs & Geometry Developer. She holds a multidisciplinary bachelor’s degree in Technology from the Center of Applied Physics and Advanced Technology, a master’s degree in Mathematics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Mathematical Biology. Her research and computational interests span a wide range of areas, with a particular focus on discrete mathematics, graph theory, and mathematical modeling of natural and social phenomena. Alongside her academic pursuits, Alejandra is also a big fan of museums, movies, gardening, and hiking.

Stephanie Bowyer

Program Director

Stephanie joined Wolfram in 2022. She worked closely with Stephen Wolfram during the 2023 and 2024 iterations of Wolfram Summer School and in 2025, she is stepping into the role of Program Director, overseeing the planning and execution of the program as a whole. Outside of WSS, she is the Execution Specialist for Programs and Events, where she is heavily involved with putting on the annual Wolfram Technology Conference and works with Stephen’s team to plan and organize his events. Stephanie holds a BA in Music Theory and an MA in Secondary STEM Education from the University of Arizona. Before joining Wolfram, she spent nine years as a high school math teacher, primarily teaching Algebra 1 and 2, and facilitating teacher training.

Christian Pasquel

Instructors

Christian Pasquel was part of the first group to join the Wolfram Research South America team in Lima, Peru, back 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 making blockchain and cryptocurrency data computable. His interests include evolutionary biology, astrobiology, artificial intelligence, music, films, books, playing with data and everything tech related. A self-proclaimed Wolfram fan, he enjoys livecoding and works on generative art projects using Mathematica. He is a cat lover and had the main part in an official music video available online.

Fez Zaman

Instructors

Fez works full time as a lexical programmer at Wolfram|Alpha. He has a BS in cognitive science from SUNY Oswego, where he also minored in computer science and audio production and design. His work centers around music, programming, the computational arts and the philosophy of mind. He attended the Wolfram Summer School in 2016 and 2018, and after joining Wolfram|Alpha, he mentored at the Wolfram High School Summer Camp in 2019 and 2020.

Hatem Elshatlawy

Instructors

Hatem joined Wolfram Research in 2020 as one of the research managers of the Wolfram Physics Project and was a participant in the Wolfram Summer School (Fundamental Physics track) in 2020. He studied theoretical physics at the University of Freiburg, the University of Vienna and RWTH Aachen University. Currently, he is based at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. In addition to fundamental physics, he is interested in the history, philosophy and foundations of mathematics.

Nikolay Murzin

Instructors

Nikolay was always into computer science, programming and hacking, but he was curious and graduated with a specialist’s degree in physics from Moscow State University. Then after trying himself as a web developer for a bit, he got into IBM as a research software engineer and data scientist, working with statistical models, computer vision and natural language processing in mostly retail and supply-chain related projects. He enjoys reading books and papers on the subjects of machine learning, math and physics and also listens to a lot of science and science fiction audiobooks. Nikolay likes to take part in competitions and hackathons, quickly dives into new technologies and continuously learns new things.

Philip Maymin

Instructors

Philip Maymin is a professor of analytics and the director of the master of science in business analytics program at the Fairfield University Dolan School of Business. He is the founding managing editor of Algorithmic Finance and the cofounder and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sports Analytics. He is the chief technology officer for the Esports Development League (ESDL), an insight partner with Essentia Analytics, an advisor to Athletes Unlimited, and an affiliated of the Langer Mindfulness Institute and has been an analytics consultant with several NBA teams. He holds a PhD in finance from the University of Chicago, a master’s in applied mathematics from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in computer science from Harvard University. He also holds a JD and is an attorney-at-law admitted to practice in California. He has been a portfolio manager at Long-Term Capital Management, Ellington Management Group and his own hedge fund, Maymin Capital Management. He was a finalist for the 2010 Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism. He was awarded a Wolfram Innovator Award in 2015. He won the Wolfram Livecoding Challenge in 2016 and second place in 2018, and he won the Wolfram One-Liner Competition in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019. He is the only person to have won both the grand prize for best research paper (2018) and hackathon (2020) at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. He attended the 2007 Wolfram Summer School as a student, the 2019 Wolfram High School Summer Camp as an instructor and the Wolfram Technology Conference as a presenter in 2016, 2018 and 2019.

Sotiris Michos

Instructors

Sotiris Michos received his diploma and PhD from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). During his PhD studies, he was part of the Wireless Communications & Information Processing (WCIP) Group at AUTH and worked in the broader areas of big data and network science, with a special emphasis on their information theoretic aspects. His research interests span a range of subject areas, including computer science, information theory, complexity, machine learning, telecommunications and control theory, with a focus on their relationships to pure mathematics. He is especially interested in the area of cognitive sciences and, in particular, in the study of complex systems in nature and technology. He has also been involved with matters of academically gifted education, contributing to the works of Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth Greece and having the honor and joy of interacting with many bright students through an assortment of different courses.

Daniel Sanchez

Teaching Assistants

Daniel Sanchez joined Wolfram Research as a developer for Wolfram|Alpha in June 2017. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from PUCP (Lima, Peru) in 2018. However, his interests now lie in the foundations of computation and the implementation and design of programming languages. These will be his research topics when he starts an MS in computer science. His hobbies—when he is not in front of a computer—are playing Super Smash Bros. Melee, studying Japanese and playing with his 15-year-old dog, Archie.

Mark Greenberg

Teaching Assistants

Mark Greenberg retired after 20 years teaching high-school math and English in Arizona. His programming skills and passion for integrating computer technology into education have led to leadership positions and conference presentations, including a talk at the 2017 Wolfram Technology Conference. He specializes in creating educational games such as Chicken Scratch, which students have enjoyed in the Wolfram Summer Programs since 2018. Mark was a Wolfram Summer School student in 2019. Between part-time tutoring and teaching, he enjoys spending time with his family, making fractal art and, of course, programming in the Wolfram Language.