The first Indian SciPy (Scientific Python) conference was inaugurated by Dr Travis Oliphant, vice-president of Enthought Inc., USA, at Technopark here on Saturday.
In his address Oliphant appreciated the initiative taken by Kerala in organising a SciPy in the country. He traced the history of SciPy and elaborated the contributions of various programmers over the past decade. He also made the delegates aware of the immense possibilities and potential of SciPy.
Python is a high-level programming language that is becoming increasingly popular for various purposes and Scientific Python is now being used extensively for scientific computations. Scientific computing is needed in various scientific disciplines to analyse and solve scientific, social and engineering problems.
R.Narayanan, former vice-president of TCS, presided over the function. He noted how programming paradigm changed over the years with the advent of high-level programming languages.
He said that these paradigms had made programming easier and accessible to people from various disciplines.
Jarrod Millman, director of computing for UC Berkeley’s Neuroscience Institute, gave a short introduction to the conference. Prof Elizabeth Sherly, director-acting, IIITM-K, offered felicitations.
Dr V.Sasi Kumar, coordinator, SPACE, welcomed the participants and Dr Prabhu Ramachandran, IIT, Mumbai, proposed a vote of thanks. Noted Baul singer Parvati Baul and Ashtapady artist Ambalappuzha Vijayakumar enthralled the audience with their spiritual performance in the evening. The conference is organised by the FOSSEE (Free and Open Source Software in Science and Engineering Education) project, IIT, Mumbai, which is funded by Union HRD Ministry, and the Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE). It is supported by the Kerala State IT Mission and the Special Interest Group in FOSS of the Computer Society of India.