# 2022 CoCo Election: Derek Homeier

**URL:** <https://community.openastronomy.org/t/2022-coco-election-derek-homeier/461>\
**Category:** Astropy\
**Tags:** astropy, coco-election\
**Created:** [September 22, 2022, 12:44am UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/2022-coco-election-derek-homeier/461 "2022-09-22T00:44:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dhomeier](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.openastronomy.org/dhomeier/32/65_2.png) [@dhomeier](https://community.openastronomy.org/u/dhomeier)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2022, 12:44am UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/2022-coco-election-derek-homeier/461/1 "2022-09-22T00:44:22Z")

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I feel deeply honoured to be nominated as for the Astropy Coordination Committee. Coming from a research background in theoretical astrophysics, Python and its scientific ecosystem has formed a key part of my data analysis workflow since searching for a free – open source – and versatile processing environment. For a number of years Astropy has become to me an example of a collaborative project striving to bundle the creative forces of an entire discipline. As a contributor, and for the past two years, co-maintainer of the Astropy core package, I am bringing the experience of a research scientist on the path to scientific software developer.  
As a CoCo member I would put place a priority on facing the challenges, highlighted several times already in our developer meetings as well as e.g. on recent Scipy conferences, of ensuring a stable environment for a project growing both in size and complexity. Having recently become a general core package maintainer and an affiliate package editor, I feel I am having a relatively good overview of the Astropy ecosystem as a whole.  
Astropy is at this point strongly driven by the activity of US-based contributors, both in numbers of active and long-time developers and the commitment of major research institutions such as STScI. As a non-native English speaker and having spent the major part of my career outside of North America, I feel committed to improve the environment for contributors more distances, by language, culture and geography, from this centre. This would also include a greater presence at relevant workshops and meetings in Europe and on other continents.