Branden Fitelson, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University, is one of the winners of the 2020 Wolfram Innovator Award. 

The Wolfram Innovator Awards, around for a few years now, aim to recognize boundary-pushing employment of “computational intelligence” that makes use of Wolfram technologies, which include Mathematica, WolframAlpha, and other products.

Professor Fitelson is the first philosopher to win this award.

He won it for his development of a user-friendly decision procedure for probability calculus called PrSat that is written in Mathematica (a Wolfram application for mathematical reasoning and programming). He describes it as like a truth-table generator, but for probability theory. He says: “You enter in arbitrary probabilistic constraints, and if there is a model satisfying them, then PrSAT outputs a model. If not, it says the set of constraints is not consistent with probability theory. It is complete and correct, and it uses standard probabilistic notation.” He uses it in his research and teaching, as do others.

The award includes recognition at a ceremony (online this year), a crystal trophy, and the opportunity to be part of the beta testing team for Mathematica.

You can view a list of previous winners of the award here.