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Project Jupyter, a non-profit organization that provides free open-source software for all to use, recently announced the results of its 2025 Executive Council elections, marking an important leadership transition. Among the council’s new members is Rick Wagner, chief technology officer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), part of UC San Diego’s School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences.

Wagner joins new council member Chris Holdgraf (2i2c) for a two-year term. Together with ongoing members Afshin Darian (Quanstack), Ana Ruvalcaba (Cal Poly), Jason Grout (Databricks) and Zach Sailer (Apple), the Executive Council ensures Project Jupyter continues to advance technical innovation, community governance, security and sustainability.

"My goal has been to strengthen SDSC’s role as a central hub for academic contributions to Project Jupyter, particularly emphasizing security, trustworthiness and accessibility," said Wagner. "Serving on the Executive Council and the Governing Board of the Jupyter Foundation offers a unique opportunity to bridge industry, academia and research communities to ensure Jupyter’s tools remain secure and reliable for educational, research and commercial applications."

In 2024, Project Jupyter migrated to the Linux Foundation Charities and launched the Jupyter Foundation, raising over $1M for development and community engagement. The Executive Council oversees all strategic decisions involving software, legal, financial and operational aspects of Project Jupyter.

"Rick’s election to Project Jupyter’s leadership highlights UC San Diego's significant role in the global open-source, data science and AI communities," said Frank Würthwein, director of SDSC. "His leadership in advancing secure software practices and strengthening the software supply chain directly aligns with our institutional mission of supporting trustworthy scientific infrastructure."

Jupyter is a cornerstone of UC San Diego’s educational and research infrastructure. The Data Science and Machine Learning Platform (DSMLP), which runs Jupyter notebooks, supports tens of thousands of students annually across hundreds of classes. Additionally, Jupyter notebooks have become essential for interactive computing on SDSC’s high-performance computing and AI resources, highlighting the platform’s centrality to campus innovation. The National Research Platform (NRP) led by UC San Diego provides Jupyter access to thousands of users throughout the nation, and this capability is the foundation of California’s own CENIC AI Resource (CENIC AIR).

"The success of this election signals a healthy, evolving open-source community with dynamic, inclusive leadership," said Fernando Pérez, co-founder of Project Jupyter. "Jupyter’s governance evolution has empowered new voices like Rick’s to step forward, bringing expertise essential for the continued growth and security of our global user community."

UC San Diego continues to have strong ties with Project Jupyter. For example, Professor Bradley Voytek serves as program chair for this year's JupyterCon, which will be hosted in San Diego in November.