Fernando Pérez

Fernando Pérez received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Colorado and did his post-doctoral work there in applied mathematics, working on fast algorithms for partial differential equations.

He is currently a research scientist at UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, focusing on the development of new analysis methods for brain imaging problems and high-level scientific computing tools. Towards the end of his graduate studies, he became involved with the development of Python tools for scientific computing. He started the open-source IPython project in 2001 when he needed an efficient interactive workflow for everyday scientific tasks. He continues to lead IPython, as part of a growing team of talented developers. He remains committed to the development of open, high-level tools to tackle the current challenges in computationally-based scientific research and education across disciplines. He is a member of the matplotlib development team and has contributed to numpy, scipy, sympy, mayavi, nipy and nitime. He regularly organizes workshops and lectures aimed at teaching the use of these tools to audiences at levels ranging from high-school students to research scientists. He is also a member of the Python Software Foundation.