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Stéfan van der Walt

Also known as S van der Walt, S. van der Walt, Stéfan J van der Walt, Stéfan J. van der Walt

Stéfan van der Walt is a scientific software developer who founded the scikit-image library and works on NumPy and SciPy, the Python libraries for image processing and array computing used across research. Born and raised in Stellenbosch, South Africa, he completed a PhD on super-resolution imaging there in 2010 and lectured in applied mathematics until May 2014. The scikit-image library was released in August 2009 and described in a 2014 paper with him as first author, and he co-authored the 2017 book Elegant SciPy and the 2020 Nature papers on SciPy 1.0 and NumPy. In the NumPy paper, he and his coauthors write that the rapid growth of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence has boosted the scientific use of Python. As of October 2026, he is a Senior Research Data Scientist at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and a community leader of the Scientific Python project.

Works
59
Citations
49,016
h-index
21
Links
Google Scholar, X, LinkedIn and GitHub

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2009–2014

    Founding scikit-image

    He founds scikit-image, which starts as scikits.image and is released in August 2009. In 2014, he is first author of the paper “scikit-image: image processing in Python”, written with eight coauthors, which describes an image processing library for research, education and industry applications.

  2. 2010–2014

    Stellenbosch PhD and lectureship

    Born and raised in Stellenbosch, South Africa, he studies electronic engineering, computer science and applied mathematics there. He completes a PhD in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Stellenbosch in 2010; his thesis, Super-resolution imaging, has B. M. Herbst as advisor and develops a new feature detector based on the discrete pulse transform. Until May 2014, he is a lecturer in applied mathematics in the Vision and Learning Group at Stellenbosch University.

  3. 2017

    Writing Elegant SciPy

    In 2017, O’Reilly Media publishes Elegant SciPy: The Art of Scientific Python, which he writes with Juan Nunez-Iglesias and Harriet Dashnow. The book works through real-world problems with SciPy, NumPy, Pandas, scikit-image and other Python libraries.

  4. By 2018

    Researcher at BIDS

    By 2018, he is an assistant researcher at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, an active member of the scientific Python community since 2006 who frequently teaches Python at workshops and conferences.

  5. May 2019

    SkyPortal astronomy platform

    In May 2019, he, Arien Crellin-Quick and Joshua S. Bloom publish “SkyPortal: An Astronomical Data Platform” in the Journal of Open Source Software. SkyPortal is a fully open-source data portal that interactively displays astronomical datasets for annotation, analysis and discovery.

  6. 2020

    NumPy and SciPy papers

    In February 2020, he is among the authors of “SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python” in Nature Methods; in September 2020, he is among the authors of “Array programming with NumPy” in Nature. The NumPy paper calls the library the foundation of the scientific Python ecosystem and says the rapid growth of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence has boosted the scientific use of Python.

  7. May 2024

    Presenting Scientific Python

    In May 2024, he presents the Scientific Python project at the BIDS Seminar, joined by Fernando Pérez and Jarrod Millman. The project is an effort to better coordinate and support the community of scientific Python ecosystem developers.

  8. As of October 2026

    Senior research data scientist

    He is a Senior Research Data Scientist at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, where he works on advancing science at the intersection of domains and computation. He is most active on scikit-image, NumPy, NetworkX and SciPy and is one of the community leaders of the Scientific Python project. His projects include the SkyPortal astronomy platform, the Cesium ML time-series machine learning library and the mystmd publication engine.

Career

  1. Since 2013University of California, BerkeleyAssistant Researcher
  2. 2010–2014Stellenbosch UniversityLecturer in Applied Mathematics

Education

  1. 2010Stellenbosch UniversityPhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of California, Berkeley. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of California, Berkeley. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of California, Berkeley. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  4. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes University of California, Berkeley. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Stéfan van der Walt yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. scikit-image - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. [1407.6245] scikit-image: Image processing in Python arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Stéfan van der Walt | Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) bids.berkeley.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. PyDev of the Week: Stefan van der Walt - Mouse Vs Python blog.pythonlibrary.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Super-resolution imaging scholar.sun.ac.za. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Stefan's Homepage mentat.za.net. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Elegant SciPy: The Art of Scientific Python - Juan Nunez-Iglesias, Stéfan van der Walt, Harriet Dashnow - Google Books books.google.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. GitHub - elegant-scipy/elegant-scipy: 1st Edition of Elegant SciPy (O'Reilly Publishers) github.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Stéfan van der Walt (SciPy 2018 speaker profile) scipy2018.scipy.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. SkyPortal | Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) bids.berkeley.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python | Nature Methods nature.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  12. Array programming with NumPy | Nature nature.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  13. Stéfan van der Walt and Scientific Python: Community, Tools, and Open Science | Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) bids.berkeley.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  14. Scientific Python - About scientific-python.org. Checked 20 October 2026.