We are excited to welcome Travis Oliphant on Wednesday, November 5, at 4:00 p.m. for a lecture. This lecture is open to all students in the College of Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences.
Biography
Dr. Travis E. Oliphant (BS 1995; MS 1996) is a luminary in the Python and AI communities having started the SciPy project in 1999 as a PhD student at the Mayo Clinic and having built NumPy in 2005 while a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at BYU. These libraries have been adopted throughout the scientific and business world serving hundreds of millions of people. His work directly enabled Python to become the number one computer language in the world and the foundation for modern AI. Travis also founded several companies and organizations including Anaconda, Inc. (in 2012) based in Austin, TX which provides secure environments for AI, ML and data-centric applications and workflows for millions of users worldwide.
In 2018, Travis founded Quansight which combines a consulting company with an open-source research lab (Quansight Labs) and a venture fund (Quansight Initiate) to focus on early-stage technology startups using open source software. In 2020 he co-founded OpenTeams, OpenTeams Global, and a company incubator (OpenTeams Incubator) to translate technology from open-source to products. The fund and the incubator have invested in over 25 companies. Travis is currently supporting the companies he founded while doing all he can to find and develop other leaders. He remains passionate about the future of AI, and technical computing and so is currently working for a startup in California, Zyphra, which is bringing advanced AI models, workflows and capabilities to businesses. When Travis isn’t working he enjoys solving a good math problem and playing board games with his kids.