On behalf of the SciPy2008 conference organizing committee, I am happy to announce that the Keynote at the conference will be given by Alex Martelli.
It is a pleasure for us to receive Alex. He currently works as “Uber Tech Leader” at Google and is the author of two of the Python classics: “Python in a nutshell” and the “Python CookBook”. Alex graduated in electronic engineering from the university of Bologna and worked in chip design first for Texas Instrument, and later for IBM Research. During the 8 years he spent at IBM, he gradually shifted from hardware design to software development while winning three Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards. Then he joined think3 inc., and Italian CAD company, as Senior Software Consultant where he developed libraries, network protocols, GUI engines, event frameworks, and web access frontends. After 12 years at think3, he worked for 3 years as a freelance consultant, mostly doing Python development, before joining Google.
Alex won the 2002 Activators’ Choice Award, and the 2006 Frank Willison award for outstanding contributions to the Python community.
Alex has also taught courses on programming, development methods, object-oriented design, and numerical computing, at Ferrara University (Italy) and other venues. Alex’s proudest achievement is the articles that appeared in Bridge World (January/February 2000), which were hailed as giant steps towards solving issues that had haunted contract-bridge game theoreticians for decades.
This biography was loosely adapted from Alex’s autobiography (http://www.aleax.it/bio.txt), more information can be found on his website http://www.aleax.it .
Go Top