Nassim Nicholas Taleb Honored for Exploring Methods of Decision-Making in Complex Situations
NYU Tandon Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering Garners Award from Wolfram Research
BROOKLYN, New York, Monday, October 29, 2018 – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, recently became a recipient of a Wolfram Innovator Award. The prize was given at the 2018 Wolfram Technology Conference in Champaign, Illinois, held in mid-October.
The Innovator Awards are given to those who play a major role in pushing the boundaries of how Wolfram technology can be leveraged for innovation across fields and disciplines. Taleb was honored for his use of Mathematica, an integrated software platform that covers the breadth and depth of technical computing. In its decision, the company cited his “contributions to decision making under complicated and less-idealized probabilistic structures.” Probabilistic structures provide a useful method of approximating data points in large data sets. Wolfram also cited Incerto, his 4-volume essay on uncertainty (Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes), in which he explored computational preasymptotics, a field that is often ignored.
“We are honored to count Professor Taleb as a member of Tandon’s Department of Finance and Risk Engineering and grateful that our students receive the benefit of his deep experience and thought leadership,” said Department Chair Peter Carr. “This latest honor from Wolfram is confirmation of the esteem in which he is held and his importance to the fields of global finance and risk.”
About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, one of the country’s foremost private research universities, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.
