Massimo A. Fazio, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Ophthalmology and Biomedical Engineering has received the 2017 Wolfram Innovator Awards for the field of Mechanical Engineering, Image Processing, and Biotechnology.

Presented during the Wolfram Technology Conference in Champaign, Illinois, this award is granted to outstanding individuals and organizations who use Wolfram technologies in cutting-edge, innovative methods of business, industry, education, and research.

Fazio was presented the award by Wolfram Research Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Stephen Wolfram.

“Like other Engineers primarily working in a medical department, my job is to develop experimental devices and computational methods that would help us understand and treat diseases,” said Fazio. “The power of the Wolfram technologies platform allowed my lab to develop a series of experimental devices and computational methods that are generating an increasing interest from the field of ocular tissue biomechanics. I’m humbled and very thankful to Wolfram for their recognition, and I’m excited to keep working with them in translating our experimental methods into clinically available computational tools for the diagnosis and treatment of blinding diseases.”

Fazio is currently exploring how visual field loss developed with glaucoma is associated with individual-specific biomechanics of the eye. He recently received the 2017 Xtreme Research Award from Heidelberg Engineering. He also recently received, together with Dr. Christopher Girkin, a four-year $2.55 million R01 grant from the National Eye Institute to study these biomechanics of the eye and explore the role of biomechanical differences in the optic nerve that may explain why individuals of African descent are at greatest risk for developing glaucoma.

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