Deadline to submit a proposal: February 26, 2025.

The 24th annual SciPy conference will be held at the Tacoma Convention Center in Tacoma, Washington, July 7-13. The conference brings together participants from industry, academia, and government to showcase their latest projects, learn from skilled users and developers, and collaborate on code development. The full program will consist of 2 days of tutorials (July 7-8), 3 days of general conference (July 9-11), and 2 days of developer sprints (July 12-13).

==>Talk & Poster Presentations<==
Highlighted Tracks
This year we are happy to announce two highlighted tracks that run in parallel with the general conference tracks:

Celebrating the “Sci” in SciPy
This track highlights the fantastic scientific applications that the SciPy community creates with the tools we collectively make. Talk proposals to this track should be stories of how using the Scientific Python ecosystem the speakers were able to overcome challenges, create new collaborations, reduce the time to scientific insight, and share their results in ways not previously possible. Proposals should focus on novel applications and problems, and be of broad interest to the conference, but should not shy away from explaining the scientific nuances that make the story in the proposal exciting.

Machine Learning, Data Science, and Explainable AI
This track aims to bring together the latest advances in Data Science and AI/Machine Learning and their applications in science and industry. This includes the development and application of new open-source tools and techniques, as well as novel discoveries in any field made by applying new and existing tools. The last few years have seen historic moments in Generative AI, with larger and more advanced models becoming available that have found applications in areas such as productivity tools and life sciences. We encourage speakers to go beyond the hype and present impactful and meaningful applications of Generative AI in their areas of expertise. We particularly encourage submissions demonstrating progress towards explainability in these models.

Conference Tracks
- General: This track showcases the development and application of new open-source tools in the SciPy ecosystem. We encourage submissions that don’t fit well into any of the existing domain-specific tracks, as well as those that easily span several domains and would benefit a wider audience.
- Earth, Ocean, Geo, and Atmospheric Science: This track welcomes talks showcasing how Python is applied to understand, model, and solve problems in Earth, Ocean, Geo, Climate, and Atmospheric Science.
- Physics and Astronomy: This track highlights the use of Python in scientific open source tools and applications across experimental and theoretical Physics and Astronomy broadly and all their subdomains.
- Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Neuroscience: This track welcomes talks demonstrating how Python is advancing research and problem-solving in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Neuroscience. Submissions can highlight Python libraries or workflows used to analyze data, create models, or simulate systems in these fields.
- Teaching and Learning: This track focuses on experiences, best practices, and tools for teaching, learning, and staying informed about the rapidly evolving field of scientific computing. Key themes include effective assignments, innovative pedagogical approaches, tools that are well-suited for classroom environments, and examples of student engagement with scientific computing. Learning occurs in a range of settings, from formal classrooms to industry contexts to self-directed exploration. We encourage submissions that reflect this diversity, including talks that share experiences with self-teaching or highlight resources for learning new skills outside of a traditional classroom setting.
- Maintainers and Community: This track invites talks that celebrate the work of maintainers and the power of community in the Python ecosystem. Submissions can focus on lessons learned from maintaining open-source projects, updates in libraries used in Scientific Python, or fostering inclusive communities.

Does your tool apply to a broad audience? Do you not see any other tracks that are thematically appropriate for your talk? Do you want to talk about lots of tools spanning many domains? Submit your proposal to the General track!

Planning for your proposal submission? Proposals must be submitted by February 26, 2025. Here's what you'll need for a submission:

Abstract
Your Abstract will appear in the online schedule and give attendees a sense of your talk. This should be around 100 words or less.

Description
Your placement in the program will be based on reviews of your description. This should be a roughly 500-word 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.

You must choose whether to submit as a talk, tutorial, or poster. Talks that are not selected will automatically be considered for a poster slot. Please note that a virtual-only poster is possible.

The form allows you to upload a paper. This is optional. You do not need to upload a paper in order to submit a talk or poster.

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 description, 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 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, tutorials, 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 open).
Submissions are automatically assigned to reviewers with expertise in the domain specific topic. Each submission is reviewed by at least 3 reviewers and rated in the following categories:
- Overall evaluation. (numerical score -2 to 2 + text evaluation)
- Is the proposal interesting to a broad range of people in the SciPy community? (numerical score -2 to 2)
- Is the proposal Clear? (numerical score -2 to 2)
- Is the proposal complete? (numerical score -2 to 2)
- How relevant and immediately useful is the topic? (numerical score -2 to 2)

The submissions and their reviews are provided to the Track Chairs. 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 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 [email protected].

==>Proceedings<==
The Proceedings Submission
Once your talk is accepted, presenters have the option to submit up to an 8 page paper by June 6 for the SciPy2025 Proceedings. The paper should follow the same guidelines as the abstract/description but elaborate on the details to help thoroughly understand the material.

By submitting a paper to the SciPy Proceedings, you are consenting to having your paper published and assigned a DOI. Even if you aren't going to write a paper, please consider volunteering to help review!

==>Tutorials<==
Topics
Tutorials should be focused on covering a well-defined topic in a hands-on manner. We want to see attendees coding! We encourage submissions to be designed to allow at least 50% of the time for hands-on exercises even if this means the subject matter needs to be limited. Tutorials will be 4 hours in duration. In your tutorial application, you can indicate what prerequisite skills and knowledge will be needed for your tutorial, and the approximate expected level of knowledge of your students (i.e., beginner, intermediate, advanced).

We are looking for interesting techniques or packages, helping new or advanced Python programmers develop better or faster scientific applications.

Information for tutorial presenters
Selection
Accepted tutorials will be announced late March. Final tutorial materials and instructions for attendees will be due on June 11th. This will include final version numbers of required software, detailed and tested installation instructions, and a test script that can be run by attendees to ensure that they have sufficient time to prepare their laptops before the conference. In addition, there will be a pre-tutorial slack channel created before the conference, and tutorial presenters are expected to make themselves available to help with setup instructions.

Stipend
In recognition of the effort required to plan and prepare a high quality tutorial, we pay a stipend of $1,000 to each instructor (or team of instructors) for each half-day session they lead.

For the submission you will need the following information:
- A short bio of the presenter or team members, containing a description of past experiences as a trainer/teacher/speaker, and (ideally) links to videos of these experiences if available.
- A list of prerequisite skills expected of attendees, so that participants can choose level appropriate tutorials.
- A description of the tutorial, suitable for posting on the SciPy website for attendees to view. It should include the target audience, the expected level of knowledge prior to the class, and the goals of the class.
- A more detailed outline of the tutorial content, including the duration of each part and exercise sessions. Please include a description of how you plan to make the tutorial hands-on.
- Detailed installation instructions for various common Python environments so that attendees can have everything ready for participating before heading to SciPy.
- If available, the tutorial notes, slides, exercise files, and IPython notebooks, even if they are preliminary.

Authors of exemplary submissions from previous years have generously agreed to share their proposals to help new instructors: https://github.com/scipy-conference/scipy-conference/tree/master/data/tutorial_submissions

You can enter proposals until 2025-02-26 23:59 (UTC), 1 month, 1 week from now.