SciPy 2018 General Conference
Talk and Poster Presentations

SciPy 2014 Auditorium

SciPy 2018, the sixteenth annual Scientific Computing with Python conference, will be held this July 9th-15th in Austin, Texas. SciPy is a community dedicated to the advancement of scientific computing through open source Python software for mathematics, science, and engineering. The annual SciPy Conference allows participants from academic, commercial, and governmental organizations to showcase their latest projects, learn from skilled users and developers, and collaborate on code development.

The submission portal is now closed.
Speakers will be notified on April 2nd.

Specialized Tracks

This year we are happy to announce two specialized tracks that run in parallel to the general conference track:

Reproducibility and Software Sustainability

We are interested in hearing about 1) software and tools that enable or improve reproducibility or sustainability, 2) case studies of reproducibility or software sustainability that can be generalized, or 3) community or education efforts that have improved reproducibility or software sustainability. What does your software or approach bring that can help others in these important areas?

Data Visualization

Data Visualization is a key tool for discovering and communicating insights with others at many levels. Python has a spectrum of data visualization solutions that complement its extensive analytical offerings. This special track is to discuss advances in data visualization and highlight innovations that have enhanced the data-sharing experience within and across disciplines and with the general public.

 



Domain-specific Mini-symposia

Introduced in 2012, mini-symposia are held to discuss scientific computing applied to a specific scientific domain/industry during a half afternoon after the general conference. Their goal is to promote industry specific libraries and tools, and gather people with similar interests for discussions.

Mini-symposia on the following topics will take place this year:

  • Astronomy
  • Biology and Bioinformatics
  • Data Science
  • Earth, Ocean and Geo Science
  • Image Processing
  • Language Interoperability
  • Library Science and Digital Humanities
  • Machine Learning
  • Materials Science
  • Political and Social Sciences

Planning for your Proposal Submission?

Proposals must be submitted by February 15, 2018. Here's what you'll need for a submission:

The Short Summary

The brief description which will appear in the online program and give attendees a basic sense of your talk. This should be around 100 words or less.

The Abstract

Your placement in the program will be based on reviews of your abstract. This should be a roughly 500 word detailed outline of your presentation. This outline should concisely describe software of interest to the SciPy community, tools or techniques for more effective computing, or how scientific Python was applied to solve a research problem. A traditional background/motivation, methods, results, and conclusion structure is encouraged but not required. Links to project websites, source code repositories, figures, full papers, and evidence of public speaking ability are encouraged.

Tips for Submitting a Proposal

The SciPy Conference is in awe of the work that is being done in the community. We receive many interesting and thought-provoking proposals but we have a limited number of spaces. Please take a look at our tips below to improve your chances of having a talk or poster accepted by the conference. In the unfortunate event that your proposal is not accepted, please keep in mind that you are welcome to give a lightning talk, book a room for a Birds of a Feather discussion, or talk to the Program Committee about displaying your work as a poster in lieu of a talk.

  • Submit your proposal early.

  • In your abstract, be sure to include answers to some basic questions:

    • Who is the intended audience for your talk?

    • What, specifically, will attendees learn from your talk?

  • Ensure that your talk will be relevant to a broad range of people. If your talk is on a particular Python package or piece of software, it should useful to more than a niche group.

  • Include links to source code, articles, blog posts, or other writing that adds context to the presentation.

  • If you've given a talk, tutorial, or other presentation before, include that information as well as a link to slides or a video if they're available.

  • SciPy talks are generally 25 minutes with 2-3 minutes for questions. Please keep the length of time in mind as you structure your outline.

  • Your talk should not be a commercial for your company’s product. However, you are welcome to talk about how your company solved a problem, or notable open-source projects that may benefit attendees.

Many of these tips are adapted from the PyCon Proposal Resources. Thanks PSF!

 

How Proposals Are Reviewed and Selected:

For those of you new to the SciPy community, we wanted to demystify the process we use to select talks and posters. The talks, posters and tutorials go through a similar process consisting of open reviews (i.e., the identities of the submitter and the reviewers are public).  
Submissions are automatically assigned to reviewers with expertise in the domain specific topic. Each submission is reviewed by 3 reviewers and rated in the following categories: 

  • Would you recommend accepting this proposal (yes/no)?
  • Proposal rating? (numerical score 1 to 5)
  • How confident are you in your review? (numerical score 1 to 5)
  • Does this abstract concisely describe software of interest to the SciPy community, tools or techniques for more effective computing, or how scientific Python was applied to solve a research problem? (numerical score 1 to 5)

The submissions and their reviews are provided to the Track or Mini-Symposia Chair. The Program Committee Co-Chairs fill this role for the general track. The Chairs review the abstracts, scores and comments for all the submissions and make recommendations to the Program Committee Co-Chairs. The Program Committee Co-Chairs take the recommendations and build the initial SciPy schedule. Those that submitted talks or posters that are selected are contacted by the Committee and they are asked to confirm their attendance at the SciPy Conference. The Program Committee works with the Mini-Symposia and Track chairs to identify a second tier of talks that will be added to the schedule in the event that some of the initial selections are not able to attend. The Tutorial Co-Chairs review the scores and comments for all tutorials and build the schedule. They consider the scores as well as balancing the level of the tutorials (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and striving for a broad mix of topics. If you have questions about the process, feel free to reach out to the Program Committee Co-Chairs at scipy@enthought.com 


Proceedings

The Proceedings Submission: Once your talk is accepted, presenters have the option to submit up to an 8 page paper by May 14th for the SciPy2018 Proceedings. The paper should follow the same guidelines as the abstract/description but elaborate on the details to help thoroughly understand the material. As in previous years, these papers will be reviewed using an open dialog that takes place on github pull requests over in the proceedings repo https://github.com/scipy-conference/scipy_proceedings.
Even if you aren't going to write a paper, please consider volunteering to help review!