About the Author

Francisco J. Blanco-Silva is the owner of a scientific consulting company called Tizona Scientific Solutions, a faculty member of the Department of Mathematics, and an associate member of the Interdisciplinary Mathematics Institute at the University of South Carolina. He obtained his formal training as an applied mathematician from Purdue University. He enjoys problem solving, learning, and teaching alike. Being an avid programmer and blogger, when it comes to writing, he relishes finding the common denominator among his passions and skills and making it available to everyone.

He wrote the prequel to this book, Learning SciPy for Numerical and Scientific Computing, Packt Publishing, and coauthored Chapter 5 of the book, Modeling Nanoscale Imaging in Electron Microscopy, Springer.

I will always be indebted to Bradley J. Lucier and Rodrigo Bañuelos for being constant sources of inspiration and for their guidance and teachings. Special thanks to my editors, Sriram Neelakantam, Bharat Patil, Nikhil Potdukhe, Mohammad Rizvi, and the many colleagues who have contributed by giving me encouragement and participating in helpful discussions. In particular, I would like to mention Parsa Bakhtary, Aaron Dutle, Edsel Peña, Pablo Sprechmann, Adam Taylor, and Holly Watson.

The most special thanks, without a doubt, goes to my wife and daughter. Grace's love and smiles alone provided all the motivation, enthusiasm, and skills to overcome the difficulties encountered during the writing of this book and everything that life threw at me ever since she was born.