Fernando Pérez is an Associate Professor in Statistics at UC Berkeley, faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, faculty director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), and co-director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Data Science & Environment Center (DSE). His research focuses on creating tools for computational research across disciplines, with an emphasis on interactive computing, open science and reproducible research. He is particularly interested in the intersection of physics, data and AI in earth science, to address critical problems such as climate change and environmental protection, as well as supporting open source and AI in healthcare. He created IPython while a graduate student in 2001 and co-founded its successor, Project Jupyter. Also an entrepreneur, he is a co-founder and CTO of AIMATX, a company that builds tools for AI-driven design of novel materials.

Pérez co-founded the non-profit 2i2c initiative and the NumFOCUS Foundation. He is the recipient of the 2024 Exceptional Public Service Medal from NASA, the 2024 "Champions of Open Science" recognition from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the 2017 ACM Software Systems Award, and the 2012 Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation. He is a Kavli Frontiers Fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences, and holds a PhD in physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder.