EuroSciPy

EuroSciPy
Name	EuroSciPy
Status	Active
Genre	Scientific conference
Frequency	Annual
Location	Various cities across Europe
First	2009

Contents

EuroSciPy

EuroSciPy is an annual European conference focused on the use of Python (programming language) in scientific research and data analysis. The event brings together practitioners from academia, industry, and public institutions to present work, share tools, and collaborate across domains such as physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geosciences, and economics. Attendees often include contributors to projects associated with NumPy, SciPy (software), and pandas (software), and organizations such as the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, and the European Space Agency. The conference has been hosted in cities including Cambridge, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Barcelona.

History

EuroSciPy began in the late 2000s as a regional counterpart to international meetings like SciPy 2001 and the PyCon family of conferences, drawing participants from research groups at institutions such as University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Imperial College London, and Universität Heidelberg. Early gatherings featured work connected to projects led by figures with links to Enthought, Continuum Analytics, and the NumFOCUS foundation. Over time EuroSciPy hosted talks intersecting with methodologies developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Society, and CNRS, and collaborations with initiatives like European Research Council grants and Horizon 2020 projects. The conference evolved alongside ecosystems exemplified by Matplotlib, SymPy, scikit-learn, and Jupyter Project, and paralleled developments at conferences such as SciPy, PyData, and Open Source Summit.

Typical EuroSciPy programs combine plenary keynote sessions, contributed talks, poster sessions, and hands-on tutorials using environments like Jupyter Notebook and tools from Anaconda (distribution). Workshops have covered topics tied to software from NumPy, SciPy (software), pandas (software), dask (software), xarray (software), scikit-image, scikit-learn, and TensorFlow. Community sprints and codefests provide time for contributions to repositories hosted on platforms such as GitHub and GitLab; these sprints often coordinate with projects affiliated with NumFOCUS and Open Knowledge Foundation. Lightning talks, birds-of-a-feather sessions, and panels invite participation from contributors associated with European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, NASA, and research teams from University College London and University of Edinburgh.

EuroSciPy is organized by local volunteer committees supported by steering groups composed of contributors from institutions like Imperial College London, University of Manchester, École Polytechnique, TU Delft, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Governance practices align with community norms developed by groups such as Python Software Foundation and NumFOCUS, including codes of conduct inspired by events like EuroPython and PyCon US. Logistics and legal arrangements have involved partnerships with university event services at University of Amsterdam, municipal venues in Leiden, and conference centers used by organizations such as Fira de Barcelona. Local organizers frequently liaise with European research infrastructures such as ELIXIR and national research councils like the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

EuroSciPy fosters connections among communities represented by organizations like The Alan Turing Institute, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL-EBI, and national bioinformatics centers. Outreach activities include tutorials for researchers affiliated with University of Helsinki, training sessions linked to CERN OpenLab, and diversity initiatives partnering with groups such as Women Who Code, PyLadies, and the Ada Lovelace Institute. The conference facilitates student engagement via interactions with societies like the Royal Society, European Physical Society, and university chapters from ETH Zurich and Politecnico di Milano.

Sponsors have ranged from technology corporations such as Intel Corporation, NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, IBM, AWS, Oracle Corporation, and Red Hat to research agencies including European Research Council, Horizon Europe, and national funding bodies like the UK Research and Innovation and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Academic sponsors have included University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, EPFL, and ETH Zurich. Philanthropic and non-profit support has come from NumFOCUS and partner foundations.

EuroSciPy has influenced science software adoption across projects used in workflows at institutions such as CERN, European Space Agency, Max Planck Society, Wellcome Trust, and clinical research centers affiliated with Karolinska Institutet. Tools and practices promoted at the conference have been integrated into curricula at universities including University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University of Zurich, and Sorbonne University, and into infrastructure used by consortia like Human Cell Atlas and International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The event has accelerated collaboration between industry labs at Siemens, Bosch, BASF, and academic groups in fields represented by Institut Pasteur.

EuroSciPy regularly features developments from a wide ecosystem: core libraries such as NumPy, SciPy (software), pandas (software), Matplotlib, SymPy, scikit-learn, scikit-image, xarray (software), dask (software), and Cython; interactive platforms like Jupyter Project and Binder (service); deployment and CI tooling from Travis CI, Jenkins (software), and GitHub Actions; and cloud and HPC technologies from OpenStack, Kubernetes, Slurm Workload Manager, and vendors such as Intel Corporation and NVIDIA. Collaborative infrastructures discussed have included Zenodo, Figshare, OpenAIRE, and data standards promoted by ELIXIR and FAIR Data Principles.