SunPy Project¶

The SunPy project is the organization which maintains the SunPy library and sponsored affiliated packages. Its primary goal is to facilitate and promote the use and development of a community-led, free and open-source solar data-analysis software based on the scientific Python environment.

The organization is described in SEP-2, and consists of a board of directors, a lead developer appointed by the board, community roles and the sunpy and affiliated package developers. Anyone is welcome to participate in the SunPy organization. The purpose of the board is to lead the overall structure and direction of SunPy while the lead developer works with the developer community to implement it. The SunPy Board publicly posts the minutes from each board meeting.

People¶

In this section we list everyone with a specific role in the project, all the members of the development community are too numerous to list here. A list of anyone who contributed code to SunPy is available on Github contributors and for each major release we keep track of who contributed in-between releases.

SunPy Board¶

Steven Christe

Dr. Steven Christe is a research astrophysicist in the Solar Physics Laboratory at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. His science interests focus on hard X-ray emission from solar flares and the quiet Sun with particular emphasis on the statistics of small transient bursts such as solar microflares; hard X-ray emission associated with solar radio emission; and the application of hard X-ray focusing optics to solar observations.

Affiliation: NASA GSFC

GitHub: ehsteve

Start Date: 17 March 2014

David Pérez-Suárez

David Pérez-Suárez is working now as a Research Software Developer at University College London. There he helps researchers to get better science via better software and teaches research software engineering to young scientists. He has studied the behavior of Coronal Bright Points with multi-instrument observations while at Armagh Observatory and participated in few EU virtual observatory projects to understand the heliosphere and the space weather effects on Earth while his jobs at Trinity College Dublin, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the South African National Space Agency and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

Affiliation: University College London

GitHub: dpshelio

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Monica Bobra

Monica Bobra is a research scientist at Stanford University in the W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, where she studies the Sun and space weather as a member of the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory science team.

Affiliation: Stanford University

GitHub: mbobra

Start Date: 14 March 2017

Russell Hewett

Russell J. Hewett is a research scientist in computational science and engineering. He has worked in solar physics since 2000 and in addition to his PhD thesis on 3D tomography of the corona, he has spent time at NASA GSFC and Trinity College Dublin working on data processing, visualization, and science software for the RHESSI, SOHO, and STEREO satellite observatories. Russell earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a focus on Computational Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois and he was a postdoc in Applied Mathematics at MIT. He has extensive experience in scientific software for Python. He is now an assistant Professor of Mathematics at Virginia Tech.

Affiliation: Virginia Tech

GitHub: rhewett

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Jack Ireland

Jack Ireland is a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, working on coronal heating, solar flares and space weather. He has worked as a member of the SOHO, TRACE, Hinode and SDO mission teams. He also runs the Helioviewer Project, which designs systems and services that give users everywhere the capability to explore the Sun and inner heliosphere and to give transparent access to the underlying data. Jack received a B.Sc in Mathematics and Physics and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Affiliation: ADNET Systems, Inc. / NASA GSFC

GitHub: wafels

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Kevin Reardon

Kevin Reardon is a staff scientist at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder.

Affiliation: NSO

GitHub: kreardon

Start Date: 23 Sep 2015

Stuart Mumford

Stuart Mumford is the Python developer for the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope Data Centre. He obtained a PhD in Numerical solar physics from Sheffield University in 2016, prior to his PhD he obtained a first class MPhys degree in Physics with Planetary and Space Physics from The University of Wales Aberystwyth, during which he spent 5 months studying at UNIS on Svalbard in the high arctic.

Affiliation: Sheffield University

GitHub: cadair

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Tiago Pereira

Tiago Pereira is an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, at the Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics and the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. He received his Ph.D. from the Australian National University, working with 3D MHD models of the solar photosphere and spectral line formation. He subsequently was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA Ames and LMSAL, studying the dynamic chromosphere and helping prepare for the IRIS mission. A member of the IRIS science team, Tiago’s research focuses on understanding the solar chromosphere by combining multi-wavelength observations with MHD simulations.

Affiliation: University of Oslo

GitHub: tiagopereira

Start Date: 07 August 2019

Bin Chen

Bin Chen is an Associate Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ, affiliated with the Department of Physics and the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from University of Virginia in 2013. Prior to his appointment at NJIT, he was an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research interests focus on high-energy aspects of solar flares and coronal mass ejections based on observations at radio, X-ray, and other wavelengths. He has been working on instrumentation, software development, and data analysis for radio facilities including the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array, Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, and the Atacama Large (sub)Millimeter Array.

Affiliation: New Jersey Institute of Technology

GitHub: binchensun

Start Date: 7 August 2019

Community Roles¶

The following people hold named roles in the SunPy community. See Community Role Descriptions for more details on each role.

Lead Developer

Stuart Mumford

Affiliation: Sheffield University

GitHub: cadair

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Deputy Lead Developer

Will Barnes

Will Barnes is a research associate at American University and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where he works on instrument data pipeline development as well as the SunPy project. Previously, he was a postdoc at the Naval Research Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory. In May of 2019, Will completed his PhD in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University under the direction of Stephen Bradshaw.

Affiliation: American University / NASA GSFC

GitHub: wtbarnes

Start Date: 3 December 2019

Communication and Education Lead

Laura Hayes

Laura Hayes is a research fellow at the European Space Agency at the ESTEC facility in the Netherlands. Previously, she obtained a PhD in solar physics from Trinity College Dublin, and then worked as a postdoc at NASA GSFC. Her research focuses mainly on multi-wavelength observations of solar flares, particularly with new observations from ESA’s Solar Orbiter.

Affiliation: European Space Agency (ESTEC)

GitHub: hayesla

Start Date: 3 November 2021

Summer of Code Administrator

David Pérez-Suárez

Affiliation: University College London

GitHub: dpshelio

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Lead Newcomer Mentor

Role Unfilled

If you are interested in filling this role see the description: Lead Newcomer and Summer of Code Mentor

Affiliation:

GitHub:

Start Date:

Continuous Integration Maintainer

Conor MacBride

Conor MacBride is a solar physics PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast, researching waves in the lower solar atmosphere. Prior to this, he obtained an MPhys degree in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from the University of St Andrews.

Affiliation: Queen's University Belfast

GitHub: ConorMacBride

Start Date: 24 November 2021

Release Manager

David Stansby

David Stansby is a Research Software Engineer in UCL’s Center for Advanced Research Computing (ARC), writing software for a wide spectrum of research groups across the university. Before that he researched the physics of the Solar Wind, our Sun’s atmosphere that stretches from the solar surface to beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Affiliation: University College London

GitHub: dstansby

Start Date: 29 November 2021

Webmaster

Role Unfilled

If you are interested in filling this role see the description: Webmaster

Affiliation:

GitHub:

Start Date:

Affiliated Package Liaison

Will Barnes

Affiliation: American University / NASA GSFC

GitHub: wtbarnes

Start Date: 24 August 2022