Fernando Pérez (software developer)

Fernando Pérez is a Colombian physicist, software developer, and free software advocate. He is best known as the creator of the IPython programming environment,^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} for which he received the 2012 Free Software Award from the Free Software Foundation and for his work on Project Jupyter for which he received the 2017 ACM Software System Award .^[7][8][9] He is a fellow of the Python Software Foundation,^[10] and a founding member of the NumFOCUS organization.^[11][12]

Fernando Pérez
Pérez in 2012
Born	Medellín, Colombia
Nationality	Colombian
Education	Physics
Alma mater	University of Colorado Boulder (PhD)
Occupation	Associate Professor
Employer	University of California, Berkeley
Known for	IPython and Project Jupyter programming environments
Awards	Free Software Award, ACM Software System Award

Life and career

Fernando Pérez was born in Medellín, Colombia, and has BSc in Physics from University of Antioquia and a PhD in particle physics from University of Colorado Boulder, where he worked on numerical simulations in Lattice QCD.^[13] He moved to California in 2008, where he currently works as an associate professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Statistics.^[14] Previously, he was a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory^[13] and associate researcher at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS).^[11][15] Pérez was named Faculty Director at BIDS stating July 2024.^[16][17]

Pérez began working on IPython as a side project in 2001, and is a co-founder of Project Jupyter, which evolved from IPython in 2014.^[1][8][18] He received a 2023 NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal for his leadership of Project Jupyter.^[19]

References

1. Research Tools: Jump Off the Page by Amanda Mascarelli. Nature 507, 523-525 (March 2014) doi:10.1038/nj7493-523a
2. Interactive notebooks: Sharing the code by Helen Shen. Nature 515, 151–152 (November 2014) doi:10.1038/515151a
3. IPython founder details road map for interactive computing platform by Paul Krill. Infoworld, February 14, 2014
4. IPython Sponsored By Microsoft by Alex Armstrong. I Programmer, October 2013
5. $6M for UC Berkeley and Cal Poly to expand and enhance open-source software for scientific computing and data science. Moore Foundation Press Release, July 2015.
6. UC Berkeley, Cal Poly Receive $6 Million for Open Source Project by Leila Meyer. Campus Technology, July 2015.
7. 2012 Free Software Award winners announced by Libby Reinish. Free Software Foundation, March 2013.
8. Wresting New Tricks From a Python: Fernando Perez Wins 2012 Award for the Advancement of Free Software by Wallace Ravven, Berkeley Research News, April 2013
9. Free Software Awards für IPython und OpenMRS. heise Open Source, March 2013
10. "PSF Membership Roster". Python.org. Archived from the original on 2020-04-23. Retrieved 2015-07-14.
11. "Fernando Pérez". Berkeley Institute for Data Science.
12. "Get Involved with the NumFOCUS Community". NumFOCUS.
13. "New Employee Profiles: Jan 2015". cs.lbl.gov.
14. "Faculty | Department of Statistics". statistics.berkeley.edu.
15. Project Jupyter gets $6M to expand collaborative data-science software by Sarah Yang. UC Berkeley News, July 07 2015
16. "Pérez named Faculty Director at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science".
17. "Berkeley Institute for Data Science appoints Fernando Pérez as the next Faculty Director".
18. "History — IPython documentation". ipython.org.
19. "Fernando Pérez honored by NASA with the Exceptional Public Service Award".

External links

Media related to Fernando Pérez (software developer) at Wikimedia Commons