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Add new case studies highlighting contributions to recent scientific discoveries

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#913 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
python

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing NumPy case studies at numpy.org/case-studies/ and the candidate research references listed in the issue. Identify research-team contacts and confirm NumPy's role in each discovery, then write approximately 7,000 characters per selected case study with supporting quotes and publish the expanded case studies.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

sustain-2026

It would be great to expand the NumPy case studies with examples showing NumPy's role in some of the major scientific advances of the 2020s.

Potential case studies:
  • JWST – detection of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere (WASP-39 b
    NumPy was used in the extraction, reduction, and analysis of JWST observations leading to the detection.
    References: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05269-w

  • NANOGrav – evidence for a nanohertz gravitational-wave background
    NumPy is part of the scientific Python stack used to analyze pulsar timing data and search for the gravitational-wave signal.
    References: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/records/mrtaw-spj56)

  • FlyWire – complete adult fruit-fly brain connectome
    NumPy was used in analyses of a connectome containing more than 139,000 neurons and tens of millions of synapses.
    References: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07968-y

  • AlphaFold – protein structure prediction
    AlphaFold uses NumPy within its data processing and inference stack. This could illustrate how NumPy supports modern computational biology and AI-driven scientific discovery.
    References: https://github.com/google-deepmind/alphafold/tree/main

  • Event Horizon Telescope – Sagittarius A*
    NumPy is used throughout EHT imaging software involved in reconstructing the first image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This could serve as a follow-up to the existing M87 black-hole case study.
    References: https://github.com/eventhorizontelescope/2022-D02-02

Suggested next steps for each candidate:
  • Identify and connect with members of the research team who could provide quotes about NumPy’s role in the research and/or discovery.
  • Write a case study for numpy.org of ~7,000 characters.
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Merged PRs (30d)
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