PyData Global
Impact Scholarship Program

AI Meets Open Source Edition | Virtual
December 6 - 9, 2023

Important dates

Oct. 9th - Oct. 25th Registration for Participants; Registration for Mentors

Nov. 1st - Participants announcement

Nov. 2nd - Mentors, speakers announcement

Dec. 6-9th - The Impact Scholarship Program Sessions

This year, the PyData Global Impact Scholarship Program focuses on the data science/Artificial Intelligence (AI) job market and the Open Source contribution ecosystem. The Program Committee will select participants, mentors, and special guests to match the field experience and expertise with openness for reskilling and curiosity.

We welcome all folks, including those who don't have any experience in the tech industry, are considering reskilling, and are interested in data science/AI and Open Source.

At the same time, we encourage participants with data science/AI experience to share their knowledge and job market experience. We hope that the scholars will learn about the Open Source contribution ecosystem, a new specialization, or skill set. Part of the Scholarship Program will focus on contributions to Open Source Software (OSS) used in data science and ML. Similarly, we welcome folks with Open Source Software (OSS) experience and are open to learning about data science and AI from practitioners.

About the Program:

The whole program will be hosted online between December 6-9th, 2023. In November, we plan to organize Open Office Style Online Hours - informal, informational, and introductory meetings for the participants. All participants must abide by our code of conduct.

You can benefit from the program if you:

- Don’t have any experience in tech, but you are considering reskilling into data science / AI

- You have a technical background, and you would like to reskill / up-skill to data science /AI

- You would like to contribute to Open Source as a technical contributor or nontechnical contributor

We welcome:

- Talks (max. 30 minutes with Q&A),

- Workshops,

- [New] Speed mentoring (1:1),

- Lightning talks,

- Networking sessions,

- Your suggestions

Topics that we plan to cover:

- Data Science and AI-related job market

- Data Science tools and ecosystem

- Carrier in the tech industry

- Open Source ecosystem

- How to contribute to OSS (Technical + Nontechnical)

- OSS contribution for your portfolio building

- Job market in OSS

- Natural language barriers in tech

- Birds of a Feather (BoFs)

- Your ideas!

FAQs

  • No. We welcome all folks to apply to take part in the Program. If we have more candidates than we can provide good quality service to, then the Program Committee might consider prioritizing Diversity Equity Inclusivity (DEI) criteria.

    The Program is part of the NumFOCUS DEI series of projects. It is designed to increase DEI in the OSS ecosystem through the broad distribution of information about the Program to diverse communities and the DEI-focused Program Agenda.

  • There is no cost for participating in the PyData Global Impacts Scholarship Program 2023. However, the Program Committee must accept your application to participate in the Program.

    Speakers, mentors, special guests, and Committee members are donating their time to make this program happen.

  • This year the PyData Global 2023 is hosted in a pay-what-you-can model, which is intended for increasing inclusivity. To attend the conference, please register separately by using this link <link>.

  • Yes. We encourage you to share your knowledge and experience in the field that you feel comfortable and learn from others in areas that can be useful for you.

  • All the participants, mentors, and speakers will receive an electronic certification of participation/contribution to the Program.

Program Committee

The PyData Global Impact Scholarship Program Committee is responsible for the participant's selection and the Program agenda preparation, including the speakers and mentor selection and special guest invitations. The role of the Committee is to provide an inclusive, effective, and inspiring experience that will support the individual career goals of the Program participants. 

The Committee members are carefully selected as experts in Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI), data science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Open Source Software (OSS), and Career Development.

Ernest Kabahima

Software Engineer at Tenkai Computer Solutions Ltd.
Location: Kampala, Uganda

Ernest kabahima is a Software engineer at Tenkai computer solutions ltd, where he works as lead developer . He is passionate about using technology to solve real-world problems. Ernest is also a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in the tech industry  and He is currently  lead organiser for  Pydata impact scholar monthly meetups.

Barbara Wilk

DEI & Talent Advisor / Owner at Project Onwards
Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands

I help tech start-ups and scale-ups build, grow, and retain top talent, focusing on DEI (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity).
I have 10+ years of experience helping high-growth, late-stage (series D, E) tech organizations grow their international teams and introduce DEI practices and processes. The last couple of months I have been working closely with early-stage (Series A-C funding) companies with their talent management and DEI needs. My academic background consists of a Master's in HR Management and Diversity & Inclusion executive education.

Kamil Kaczmarek

Technical Training Lead at Anyscale Inc.
Location: San Francisco, USA

Kamil is a Technical Training Lead at Anyscale Inc., where he creates technical training and educational resources for software engineers and AI professionals. Before joining Anyscale, he co-founded neptune.ai and worked at an AI consultancy company. Kamil holds an M.Sc. in Cognitive Science and a B.Sc. in Computer Science.

Lucy Jiménez (she/her/ella)

Software Computational chemist and Data Scientist at BioC2, University of Cologne
Location: Cologne, Germany

I'm a computational chemist and data scientist passionate about promoting inclusivity and equity within open source. At the University of Cologne, I work with the BioC2 project, developing field-based genomic applications using machine learning and network analysis methods to assess ecosystem health. I'm proudly involved in the DEI Committee for the Jupyter Project and lead PyLadies Colombia. I've actively contributed to open-source initiatives, supporting sprints for scikit-learn and PyMC libraries at Data Umbrella and transcribing their events. I've also received a NumFOCUS grant through Project Pandas to enhance the asv library for Python package benchmarking, all while encouraging underrepresented groups to join open-source projects. Additionally, I co-founded Modelamiento Molecular Colombia and the Women in Bioinformatics and Data Science network for Latin America. I'm deeply committed to community engagement with experience as a community leader and co-organizer of events like SciPy Latam 2019 and PyCon Colombia 2023. Let's collaborate to foster inclusivity in open source! 💜😊🌐🚀

Oriol Abril

Freelance Open Source Maintainer
Location: Barcelona, Spain

I am a computational statistician with a passion for open source, teaching and community building. I am currently working as open source maintainer of ArviZ and PyMC, both Python libraries related to Bayesian modeling and sponsored by NumFOCUS. I try to ensure that my open source work targets all areas of the projects and is not code-centric. Among other things, I have mentored several people joining the project (both within internship programs like GSoC or Outreachy and outside them), I do extensive documentation work and led ArviZ's and PyMC's participation in Google Season of Docs, I have helped organize sprints and given webinars on contributing to the libraries, and I spearheaded governance updates. I am also an instructor at IntuitiveBayes and I have taught undergrad courses on maths and statistics as external lecturer.

Previous Editions of the Impact Scholarship Program

It’s going to be the third edition of the Program. We will both use good practices gained from the previous editions as well as introduce a couple of innovations. 

This year, we decided to focus specifically on data science/AI and contribution to Open Source. The main team of the Program is reskilling and up-skilling to find your happy place in the tech job market and in the Open Source community. 

You can find out the information about the first edition of Impact Scholarships, organized in 2021, here: https://numfocus.medium.com/impact-scholarships-2021-update-42a53b9c3cd3.