Associate Professor Fernando Pérez has been named Faculty Director for the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS). The appointment will start in July, 2024. As a founding team member of BIDS, Pérez brings a deep understanding of the data science community at Berkeley and a commitment to high profile open-source projects. Open-source remains one of the fundamental pillars of BIDS.

Pérez will be taking over for founding BIDS Faculty Director Saul Perlmutter and BIDS Associate Faculty Director Heather Haveman who along with the broader community of students, postdocs, fellows, staff, faculty, and partners have shaped BIDS in its first decade.
 
Pérez serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics, where his research focuses on creating tools for modern computational research and data science across domain disciplines, with an emphasis on high-level languages, interactive and literate computing, and reproducible research. Through tools like IPython and Project Jupyter (which he co-founded), Professor Pérez builds foundational blocks that enable scientists to tackle all stages of computational research (from exploration through publication) with a coherent approach, thus improving scientific productivity, collaboration and reproducibility. A native of Medellín, Colombia, he earned his BSc in Physics from the University of Antioquia and a PhD in particle physics from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Within the newly formed College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), BIDS will continue to be a vibrant home for interdisciplinary, collaborative efforts, building on the historical strengths of Berkeley in open source software and open platforms for data science and society. BIDS will utilize data science tools to help foster communities, leading to broad societal impact.

-Cody Markelz and Alex Coughlin