Greg Wilson (programmer)

Greg Wilson (programmer)
Name	Greg Wilson
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Software developer; educator
Known for	Software Carpentry; programming education; scientific computing

Greg Wilson (programmer) is a Canadian software developer and educator known for founding and leading initiatives in programming instruction and scientific computing. He has led projects and organizations that intersect with Carpentries, Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, Mozilla, Python Software Foundation, and academic institutions such as the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. His work emphasizes reproducible research, open source tools, and instructor training across communities including GitHub, Jupyter Notebook, NumPy, and RStudio.

Early life and education

Wilson was born and educated in Canada, studying computer science and related fields that connected him to institutions like the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, and research environments associated with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Early influences included exposure to software projects and publications from groups such as ACM, IEEE, and figures from the open source ecosystem like contributors to GNU Project, Linux distributions, and the Python community. During his formative years he engaged with conferences including PyCon, SciPy, and workshops sponsored by organizations like NSF and Wellcome Trust.

Career

Wilson's career spans roles in academia, nonprofit organizations, and industry. He founded or co-founded Software Carpentry and helped merge it with Data Carpentry under the umbrella of the Carpentries. He has collaborated with the Mozilla Foundation, the Python Software Foundation, and educational projects at Harvard University and the Carnegie Mellon University ecosystem. His professional activities include work with GitHub for curriculum packaging, contributions linked to Jupyter Project and IPython, and interactions with funding and policy bodies such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. Throughout his career he has worked with researcher communities at institutions such as Stanford University, MIT, Oxford University, and Imperial College London.

Contributions to software development and education

Wilson helped develop training materials and pedagogy for computational researchers, integrating tools and projects like Git, Mercurial, LaTeX, R, Python, NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, and Jupyter Notebook. He advocated for practices such as reproducible workflows popularized in collaboration with teams at European Bioinformatics Institute, Broad Institute, and initiatives like ReproZip. His initiatives trained instructors using models adopted by organizations including SageMath, BioConductor, OpenStreetMap, and community workshops at CERN and NASA Ames Research Center. He contributed to community infrastructure connecting to platforms such as Zenodo, Figshare, and arXiv for research dissemination. Wilson promoted open educational resources aligned with standards championed by Creative Commons and interoperable tooling used by projects such as Travis CI and CircleCI.

Publications and talks

Wilson authored and co-authored books and resources adopted across universities and labs, collaborating with authors and communities associated with publishers and groups like O'Reilly Media, Addison-Wesley, and editorial boards connected to Communications of the ACM and IEEE Software. His publications addressed topics relevant to audiences at PyCon, SciPy, Strata Data Conference, OpenCon, and symposia organized by ACM SIGPLAN and ACM SIGSOFT. He has delivered keynote and invited talks at venues including University of Cambridge, Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, and networks maintained by ELIXIR and Global Organization for Bioinformatics Learning, Education & Training (GOBLET).

Awards and recognition

Wilson's efforts have been recognized by awards and honors from organizations such as the Python Software Foundation, the Software Sustainability Institute, and recognition from funders including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Wellcome Trust. He has been cited in community acknowledgments by groups like The Carpentries and received commendations from academic partners at ETH Zurich and Max Planck Society collaborators. His work has been featured in media and professional outlets connected to Nature, Science, and The Guardian science sections.

Personal life and community involvement

Outside formal roles, Wilson has been active in mentoring and community building with networks including Mozilla Festival, local user groups such as Python User Group chapters, and volunteer efforts linked to Open Source initiatives and hackathons hosted by institutions like HackMIT and Y Combinator affiliated events. He collaborates with peers across organizations including DataKind, NumFOCUS, and volunteer instructors associated with The Carpentries to strengthen capacity in research computing and open scholarship.

Category:Canadian computer programmers Category:Software carpentry