Download Invited talks

SciPy.in 2010
2nd International Conference on “Scientific
Computing with Python”
SciPy.in 2010
December 13th to 18th 2010, Hyderabad, India
http://scipy.in/scipyin/2010/
Invited Talks
How Python Slithered into Astronomy
Perry Greenfield
Talk/Paper Abstract
I will talk about how Python was used to solve our problems for the Hubble Space Telescope. From humble
beginnings as a glue element for our legacy software, it has become a cornerstone of our scientific
software for HST and the next large space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as many
other astronomy projects. The talk will also cover some of the history of essential elements for scientific
Python and where future work is needed, and why Python is so well suited for scientific software.
IPython : Beyond the Simple Shell
Fernando Perez
Talk/Paper Abstract
IPython is a widely used system for interactive computing in Python that extends the capabilities of the
Python shell with operating system access, powerful object introspection, customizable "magic" commands
and many more features. It also contains a set of tools to control parallel computations via high-level
interfaces that can be used either interactively or in long-running batch mode. In this talk I will outline some
of the main features of IPython as it has been widely adopted by the scientific Python user base, and will
then focus on recent developments. Using the high performance ZeroMQ networking library, we have
recently restructured IPython to decouple the kernel executing user code from the control interface. This
allows us to expose multiple clients with different capabilities, including a terminal-based one, a rich Qt
client and a web-based one with full matplotlib support. In conjunction with the new HTML5 matplotlib
backend, this architecture opens the door for a rich web-based environment for interactive, collaborative
and parallel computing. There is much interesting development to be done on this front, and I hope to
encourage participants at the sprints during the conference to join this effort.
Teaching Programming with Python
Asokan Pichai
Talk/Paper Abstract
As a trainer I have been engaged a lot for teaching fresh Software Engineers and software job aspirants.
Before starting on the language, platform specific areas I teach a part I refer to as Problem Solving and
Programming Logic. I have used Python for this portion of training in the last 12+years. In this talk I wish to
share my experiences and approaches. This talk is intended at Teachers, Trainers, Python Evangelists,
and HR Managers [if they lose their way and miraculously find themselves in SciPy :-)]
matplotlib: Beyond the simple plot
John Hunter
Talk/Paper Abstract
matplotlib, a python package for making sophisticated publication quality 2D graphics, and some 3D, has
long supported a wide variety of basic plotting types such line graphs, bar charts, images, spectral plots,
and more. In this talk, we will look at some of the new features and performance enhancements in
matplotlib as well as some of the comparatively undiscovered features such as interacting with your data
and graphics, and animating plot elements with the new animations API. We will explore the performance
with large datasets utilizing the new path simplification algorithm, and discuss areas where performance
improvements are still needed. Finally, we will demonstrate the new HTML5 backend, which in combination
with the new HTML5 IPython front-end under development, will enable an interactive Python shell with
interactive graphics in a web browser.
Mayavi : Bringing Data to Life
Prabhu Ramachandran
Talk/Paper Abstract
Mayavi is a powerful 3D plotting package implemented in Python. It includes both a standalone user
interface along with a powerful yet simple scripting interface. The key feature of Mayavi though is that it
allows a Python user to rapidly visualize data in the form of NumPy arrays. Apart from these basic features,
Mayavi has some advanced features. These include, automatic script recording, embedding into a custom
user dialog and application. Mayavi can also be run in an offscreen mode and be embedded in a sage
notebook (http://www.sagemath.org). We will first rapidly demonstrate these key features of Mayavi. We will
then discuss some of the underlying technologies like enthought.traits, traitsUI and TVTK that form the
basis of Mayavi. The objective of this is to demonstrate the wide range of capabilities that both Mayavi and
its underlying technologies provide the Python programmer.
Nipype: Opensource platform for unified and replicable interaction with existing neuroimaging tools
Satrajit Ghosh
Talk/Paper Abstract
Current neuroimaging software offer users an incredible opportunity to analyze their data in different ways,
with different underlying assumptions. However, this has resulted in a heterogeneous collection of
specialized applications without transparent interoperability or a uniform operating interface. Nipype, an
open-source, community-developed initiative under the umbrella of Nipy, is a Python project that solves
these issues by providing a uniform interface to existing neuroimaging software and by facilitating
interaction between these packages within a single workflow. Nipype provides an environment that
encourages interactive exploration of neuroimaging algorithms from different packages, eases the design of
workflows within and between packages, and reduces the learning curve necessary to use different
packages. Nipype is creating a collaborative platform for neuroimaging software development in a highlevel language and addressing limitations of existing pipeline systems.