EPS Board Candidates for 2015/2016

At this year’s General Assembly we will vote in a new board of the EuroPython Society.

List of Board Candidates

The EPS bylaws require one chair and 2 - 6 board members. The following candidates have stated their willingness to work on the EPS board. We are presenting them here (in alphabetical order).

Borja Ayerdi

PhD Student / Co-Founder and CEO of Neurita / Treasurer

Borja is a PhD student in the University of the Basque Country. He has a degree in Information Engineering of the same university. His PhD thesis is focused in several areas of machine learning applications to image processing, including aortic and brain imaging as well as hyperspectral satellite imaging. He uses Python for his research projects.

He is a co-founder and the treasurer of the non-profit Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS).  With the local community he is co-organizer of Python San Sebastian Conference Series. He is member of the EuroPython 2015 core organization team. He loves the social interaction and the community.

Oier Echaniz Beneitez

PhD Student /  Consultant / Chair of ACPySS

Oier currently is a PhD Student in the University of the Basque Country. He has a degree in Information Engineering from the same university. His PhD is focused in medical imaging, cancer diagnosis and machine learning. He uses Python in his daily programming projects. He is also co-founder and chair of the Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS), a non-profit organization involved in the use of Python, Free Software and Technology in business and education. With the local community he co-organized a Software Carpentry and is co-organizer in the Python San Sebastian conference series.  He is member of the EuroPython 2015 core organization team. He is also promotor of a local project Asmatu Intelligent Solutions, where he works as data analyst consultant.

In his leisure time he helps as an IT expert in a non-profit organization called ASPANOGI. This organization takes care of children with cancer, teaching them computer science and providing them tools and machines where they can play during hospitalization.

Dr. Darya Chyzhyk

PhD/ Python programming enthusiastic for research and science

Currently, Darya is a Post-Doc at the University of Florida, USA. She has a degree in applied mathematics and defended her thesis in computer science. Last 7 years Darya has been working on computer aided diagnostic computer systems for brain diseases at the University of the Basque Country, Spain and she is a member of of the Computational Intelligence Group since 2009. Her aim is to develop computational methods for brain MRI processing and analysis, including open sours tools, that help to the medical people in their specific pathologies research studies.

She has experience in International Conference organization and take part in the events for the teenagers and kids such as Week of science. Participant in more than 10 international science conference, trainings and summer courses.

Board member of Python San Sebastian Society (ACPySS) and on-site team of EuroPython 2015.

Marc-André Lemburg

Pythonista / CEO / Coach / Consultant

Marc-Andre is the CEO and founder of eGenix.com, a Python-focused project and consulting company based in Germany. He has a degree in mathematics from the University of Düsseldorf. His work with and for Python started in Winter 1993/1994. He became Python Core Developer in 1997. In 1999, he designed and implemented the Unicode support in Python and continued to maintain the Python Unicode implementation for more than a decade. Marc-Andre is a founding member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and has served on the PSF Board several times. He is the author of the well-known Python “mx” Extensions, e.g. mxTextTools, mxDateTime and mxODBC, which are now distributed and maintained through eGenix.com.

In 2002, Marc-Andre was on the executive committee to run the first EuroPython conference in Charleroi, Belgium. He also co-organized the second EuroPython 2003 conference. Since then, he has attended every single EuroPython conference and continued being involved in the workings of the conference organization.

In 2012, he was elected as board member of the EuroPython Society (EPS). He enjoyed the last few years working with the EPS board members on steering the EuroPython conference to the new EuroPython Workgroup structures and believes that the new model will make it possible to sustain the continued growth while maintaining the EuroPython spirit and fun aspect of the conference.

For the 2015 edition, Marc-Andre chaired the EuroPython Admin WG and Communications WG. He set up the internal EuroPython organization wiki, most of the EuroPython and EPS accounts and mailing lists, managed the WG member accounts, EPS member accounts, helped setting up and running the EuroPython 2015 website and the pre-launch site before that, the EuroPython Guidebook, running the conference budget, and a gazillion smaller things needed for the conference.

Going forward, he would like to continue the transition process of the EPS and prepare it for a bright future.

Anthon van der Neut

Consultant / Software Engineering Manager

He has been working with Python on a professional basis since 1998, after having been introduced to the language a few years earlier while working in Amsterdam. Since 2007 he maintains the C implementation of OrderedDict he developed, used by those pythonistas for whom a Pure Python implementation is not fast enough. He has spoken at and visited PyCon and visited several EuroPythons after moving back to Europe.

He has managed software development in companies across 3 continents, primarily oriented at 3D resp. 2D computer graphics and media management software. This included managing the Commotion development team, then used at ILM for rotoscoping Star Wars episodes I-III.

He was quaestor on the board of the student society Augustinus while studying Mathematics, Japanese and Linguistics in Leiden. He was founding chairman of the Dutch 68000 user group (back in 1984 when that processor was state-of-the-art) and published about his work on how to hook up a floating point coprocessor in his Atari ST, as well as on how to adapt the libraries of Modula-2 to use it.

More recently he has managed the website and member administration of his local karate-club.

When not working on Python, but still at the computer, he can be found answering questions on the Unix & Linux resp. Ebooks StackExchange sites, or refreshing his math skills at Khan Academy where he is one of the few to hold the coveted Tesla badge.

When detached from his keyboard, he can be found cooking for his teenage daughter or practising karate.

He joined the EPS as he likes to work with like minded people in a multicultural environment promoting his favourite programming language.

Fabio Pliger

Software Engineer / Trainer / Consultant

Fabio currently works as a software engineer, trainer and consultant. He has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Verona, Italy. Has started working with Python on a professional basis since 2003 building different kind of tools and projects mainly for pharmaceutical companies. In 2007, he co-founded his own software and consulting company focused at the pharmaceutical industry market, that he left in 2013.

He has been the chairman of the board of the EuroPython Society since 2012 trying to help the Society maintain the series of successful conference, improve it’s interaction with the community, scale as numbers grow and keep the Conference spirit of fun, openness and respect that is a deep trait of the EuroPython conference. He has been a co-organizer of the EuroPython Conference series for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 editions in Florence.

In 2007, he co-founded the Python Italia Association, a non-profit organization devoted to advance open source technology related to the Python programming language in Italy. As result of this he has been a co-organizer of the PyCon Italia conference in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2014.

He joined the EPS because he loves the social interaction, community and to help promote his favorite programming language.

Outside the Python community Fabio loves to spend time with his family, friends, cooking and traveling.

Dr. Alexandre Manhaes Savio

Pythonista / PhD / Co-Founder and CTO / Trainer / Spokesperson

Alex has a PostDoc position in the University of Wroclaw, he is an expert working with Neuroimaging. He has a PhD and degree in Information Engineering in the University of the Basque Country. In the university he is a member of the Computational Intelligence Group, where he participated in the organization of 4 scientific conferences. He is core developer of medical image tools which are popular in the computer Science Faculty of the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian. His interests are oriented to medical imaging and computer vision applications, computer clusters administration and high-performance computing.

He is the most veteran Python user in the Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS), he is also a co-founder and the spokesperson in this non-profit organization. With the local community he organized trainings for beginners and intermediate Python users, Software Carpentries and is co-organizer of Python San Sebastian Conference Series. He is member of the EuroPython 2015 core organization team.

Vicky Twomey-Lee

Software Engineer / Tech event Organiser

She currently organises Python Ireland monthly events as well as being on its committee. She was the chair of PyCon Ireland from 2010 to 2013.

She is now involved in diversity initiatives in Python and PyCon Ireland, founded PyLadies Dublin which launched in October 2013 during PyCon Ireland, and is currently organiser of its monthly meetups. Vicky has been a member of PSF since 2012.

She joined EPS as board member to learn about and help local organisers to run EuroPython.

Outside of Python community, she organises female-friendly adult workshops to encourage diversity in the tech area via Coding Grace which she co-founded with other developers based in Dublin, Ireland. She also co-founded and co-organise community game jams called Global GameCraft bringing game enthusiasts, hobbyists, developers as well as those in the games industry (big and small) to make games in one day, play each others games at the end of it and make new connections.

Want to run as candidate ?

More candidates from the EPS membership are welcome. Please write to board@europython-society.org to get your name added to the list of candidates. We will keep this posting updated with all new candidates.

What does the EPS Board do ?

The EPS board runs the day-to-day business of the EuroPython Society. It is allowed to enter contracts for the society and handle any issues that have not been otherwise regulated in the bylaws or by the General Assembly. Most business is handled by email on the board mailing list, board meetings are usually run as conference calls.

Board members are generally expected to take on leadership roles within the EuroPython Workgroups.

Enjoy,
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EuroPython Society