An overview of Python: A language for most of your applications

Alex de Siqueira is a postdoctoral researcher at BIDS, working on open source algorithms for processing computed tomography (CT) 3D images. He received his MS and PhD from the State University of São Paulo, Brazil, applying image processing tools to tackle challenges in materials science and geochronology. A core developer of scikit-image, he is an open source and free software enthusiast since his first contact with Linux, in 2000, contributing to several projects and events in Latin America and Europe. Alex also worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the State University of Campinas, Brazil, and the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany, where he created pytracks and wrote Octave - Your first steps on scientific programming (in Brazilian Portuguese).

BIDS Biology and Environmental Sciences Lead Ciera Martinez focuses on data intensive research projects that aim to understand how life on this planet evolves in reaction to the environment and climate – especially projects involving large and complex datasets.  A long-time open science advocate, Ciera has been involved with and continues to be interested in working on training for open data, education, publishing, and software, including developing community standards for data management practices.  As a 2019 Mozilla Open Science Fellow, she connected her love of data and museums and worked on projects aimed at understanding and increasing the usability of biodiversity and natural history museum data.  She received her PhD in Plant Biology from UC Davis, researching the genetic mechanisms regulating plant architecture.  She then went on to become a NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department, studying genome evolution.  She was also a BIDS postdoctoral Data Science Fellow for 3 years, working on undergraduate research practices, data science training, community development, and best practices for data science, diversity and inclusion, and computational research.  

Maryam Vareth leads BIDS’ data science research efforts in the Health & Life Sciences.  Dr. Vareth is a Co-Director of the Innovate For Health initiative, a collaboration among UC Berkeley, UCSF, and Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. As an experienced engineer, researcher, and data scientist, she applies mathematics, statistics and physics to solve unmet needs in healthcare to enhance patients’ experience during their medical journey. She is an advocate for “data-driven” medicine, and in particular for linking medical imaging data with medical diagnostics and therapeutics to extract clinically-relevant insights through the use of open research and open source practices.  Dr. Vareth received her BS and MS training in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from UC Berkeley, where she was awarded the prestigious Regent’s and Chancellor’s Scholarship.  She completed her PhD through the joint UC Berkeley-UCSF Bioengineering program as a National Science Foundation Fellow, where she was awarded the Margaret Hart Surbeck Endowed Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Research for her work on developing new techniques and algorithms for the acquisition, reconstruction and quantitative analysis of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Imaging (MRSI), with the goal of improving its speed, sensitivity and specificity to improve the management of patients with brain tumors.  She conducted her post-doctoral fellowship at UCSF, combining structural, physiological and metabolic imaging data from large clinical trials to quantitatively characterize heterogeneity within malignant brain tumors.

Marsha Fenner is the Communications/Program Manager for the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. In this role, she works to connect researchers and data science practitioners across a wide array of academic disciplines, facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, and implement training and education programs that engage and expand BIDS' and Berkeley’s active and diverse research community. Fenner has managed communications, training/education/outreach programs, and administrative operations for scientific programs and research initiatives at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, including the Innovative Genomics Institute, the DOE Joint Genome Institute, and Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source. She holds an MA in philosophy and comparative religious studies, and a BA in classics, philosophy and mathematics.

Ann Cleaveland is currently BIDS Interim Executive Director. She has been the Executive Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CTLC) since 2018, and her expertise in non-profit management, philanthropy, and industry relations contributes to CLTC’s mission of anticipating and addressing cybersecurity challenges, and its success as a research and collaboration hub that provides guidance to policy and decision-makers act and expands access and participation in cybersecurity. She was previously the Senior Director of Strategic Planning at the ClimateWorks Foundation and the architect of its learning and evaluation systems, focused on advancing a more strategic, effective, and science-based response to global climate change. She is fluent in Spanish and received her BA from Rice University and her MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio Graduate School.