Welcome, Wes!

We are excited to announce that Wes McKinney has joined Posit!

If you’re a Python data scientist, you already know who Wes is, because of the last 15 years of his work on data analysis tools. His pandas package became the standard for Python data analysis and manipulation. His book Python for Data Analysis taught a generation of data scientists how to be productive with the emerging platform of pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, and Jupyter. Since creating pandas, Wes has worked tirelessly to make the core systems we use to process and analyze data scalable, interoperable, and composable. His Ibis project provided a lightweight, universal interface for data wrangling in Python. His work on Apache Arrow enabled it to become a widely-adopted language-independent, hardware-optimized development platform for in-memory analytics. His work on Apache Parquet helped expand access to open columnar data formats from R and Python. His work with Hadley Wickham on feather provided a fast, interoperable binary format for data frame storage.

Many of us at Posit have had the pleasure of working with Wes on various projects over the years. We’ve also benefited from his advice as we made the transition from RStudio to Posit. And now we’re thrilled to have his help contributing to the PyData ecosystem. When we changed our name to Posit our hope was to unify efforts around creating great tools for data science, regardless of language, and working with Wes is a huge step forward in realizing that dream. 

Check out Wes’s blog post to learn more about what he plans to work on at Posit. We can’t wait to see what he creates in the years ahead!