About Me

I am a maintainer of SciPy, an open source Python library providing fundamental algorithms for science and engineering, and Pixi, a cross-language, cross-platform package manager. See Open Source Software.

I am also a First Class MCompSciPhil graduate from the University of Oxford, having received The Hoare Prize for best overall performance in Computer Science and Philosophy 2026. See Oxford.

I work at prefix.dev, building open-source tools to solve packaging challenges for software engineers.

My pronouns are he/him.

News Articles

• “Lucas Colley awarded prize for outstanding performance in Computer Science and Philosophy”
• “Lucas Colley made maintainer of impactful open-source library”
• “Undergraduate praised for ’extraordinarily impactful’ open-source work”

Open Source Software

I have spent a lot of time contributing to free and open source software. This type of software is valuable because it democratises access to computational tools and encourages reproducible science. Also, anybody is welcome to help make it better.

Projects

Positions

I have held the following tangible positions in this space:

Conferences

I have enjoyed attending various conferences to meet other developers and speak about my work. See talks for slides of my talks.

Oxford

I studied Computer Science & Philosophy at Christ Church, University of Oxford, and graduated with a First Class MCompSciPhil in 2026.

I was the Undergraduate Vice-President at Christ Church in 2024/25.

Prizes

I was awarded the following prizes:

• The Hoare Prize for best overall performance in Computer Science and Philosophy 2026.
• The Cipriani Prize in Computer Science for extracurricular work.
• The Roach Exam Prize for First Class Final Honours School performance.
• The Department of Computer Science Group Project Prize in 2024.

Courses

I wrote a Computer Science dissertation titled ‘Batched and Hardware-Accelerated Iterative Sparse Linear Solvers in Python’, supervised by Professor Joe Pitt-Francis and Dr Irwin Zaid.

I studied the following Computer Science courses:

Discrete Mathematics, Probability, Linear Algebra, Continuous Mathematics, Design & Analysis of Algorithms, Models of Computation, Algorithms & Data Structures, Functional Programming, Imperative Programming, Concurrent Programming, Computer Security, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Quantum Information

under Dr Irwin Zaid, Professor Yarin Gal, Professor Lars Kunze, Dr Andrey Kravchenko, Dr Graham Benham, and Dr Murad Banaji.

I studied the following Philosophy courses:

General Philosophy, Turing on Computability and Intelligence, Early Modern Philosophy (Descartes & Hume), Ethics, Elements of Deductive Logic, Philosophical Logic, Feminist Theory, Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technology, Theory of Politics

under Dr Fabian Pregel, Professor Peter Millican, Dr Aylon Cohen, Emily Dyson, Dr Christopher Frugé, Dr Alesia Priete, Dr Nick Tasker, Dr Theodor Nenu, and Dr Thomas Mitchell.

Positions

In my college, I held the following positions:

• Undergraduate Vice-President
• Undergraduate Access Officer
• Access Tutor
• Captain of the Men’s Football 2nd XI

My LinkedIn contains descriptions of these roles.

Interests

In my free time, I enjoy contributing to free and open source software, listening to music, running, playing football and pool, and video games.

I am broadly interested in critical theory and politics, particularly politics which aims to reduce inequality, increase democracy, and make change for peace.

Contact Me

You can email me at lucascolley@proton.me.

My other authentic addresses have been:

• lucas@prefix.dev
• lucas.colley8@gmail.com
• lucas.colley@chch.ox.ac.uk