About Charmers Group
We began operations in 2009, specialising in the design and delivery of technical training to corporates and government organisations across Python, data science, machine learning and AI.
We have now trained over 7,000 people through over 700 courses across Australia, New Zealand, South-East Asia, USA, and Europe.
Charmers Group operates two brands: Python Charmers for Python and data science training, and AI Charmers for AI and machine learning.
Across both, our trainers are working practitioners who can explain technical material in plain English, drawing on backgrounds in research, academia and industry.
Our Expertise
We specialise in Python programming, data science, machine learning, and AI. Our trainers are active practitioners who bring real-world experience to every course.
Our Values
We believe in practical, hands-on learning with small class sizes to ensure personalised attention. Our courses are designed to deliver immediate, applicable skills.
Our Mission
To empower professionals and organisations with the Python and AI skills they need to succeed in an increasingly data-driven world.
Our Clients
We've trained teams at leading organisations including Boeing, Cisco, Toyota, Optus, and many Australian government agencies and universities.
Our Training Philosophy
Expert Instructors
Learn from experienced professionals who apply this work daily in real-world projects.
Hands-On Learning
Practice with practical exercises and real-world examples throughout the course.
Industry Recognised
Receive certification upon completion, recognised by employers worldwide.
Ongoing Support
Get access to post-course support and resources to continue your learning journey.
Our Team
Our team of specialists consists of experienced professionals in Python development, machine learning, data science, and technical training.
Dr Ed Schofield
Founder and Lead Trainer
Ed is the founder of Python Charmers in Australia and Singapore. Ed has trained over 3000 people from dozens of organizations in data science using Python, including Atlassian, Barclays, Cisco, CSIRO, Dolby, Harvard University, IMC, Singtel Optus, Oracle, Shell, Telstra, Toyota, Verizon, and Westpac. He is well-known in the Python community as a former release manager of SciPy and the author of the widely used future package. He organizes the Python user group in Melbourne and is sought-after as a speaker at conferences in Python and data science around the world.
Ed holds a PhD in machine learning from Imperial College London. He also holds BA and MA (Hons) degrees in mathematics and computer science from Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He has 20+ years of experience in programming, teaching, and public speaking.
Robert Layton
Senior Trainer
Robert is the author of the book "Data Mining with Python", published by Packt in 2016. He provides analysis, consultancy, research and development work to businesses primarily using Python. Robert has worked with government, financial and security sectors, in both a consultancy and academic role. Before joining Python Charmers, he was also a Research Fellow at the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory, Federation University Australia, investigating cybercrime analytics and data-mining algorithms for attribution and profiling.
Robert is a contributor to the Python-based scikit-learn open source project for machine learning and writes regularly on data mining for a number of outlets. He also authored the website learningtensorflow.com and sold it to DataBricks in 2017. He has presented at a number of international conferences in Python, data analytics, and its applications.
Henry Walshaw
Senior Trainer & GIS Expert
Henry has 16 years of experience in GIS, spatial analysis and application development, particularly in the natural resource management field. Henry's core technical expertise relates to the development and analysis of large scale spatial datasets (primarily using Python), and communicating this understanding to people including subject matter experts and the general public.
Henry has worked in government at federal and state levels, at Geoscience Australia (GA), the Victorian Government Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He has also worked in the private sector as a consultant, manager and CTO at a startup. He is currently a senior developer at FloodMapp, an Australian company developing real-time flood alerting systems. He has trained over 1000 people with Python Charmers from organisations including AGL, the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, ESRI, National Australia Bank, and Telstra. He holds a Bachelors in Computational Science.
Emeritus Trainers
We are grateful to these amazing past trainers for their service to our clients.
Dr Juan Nunez-Iglesias
Emeritus Trainer
Juan Nunez-Iglesias is co-author of the book Elegant SciPy, published by O'Reilly Media. Juan is a core developer of the scikit-image Python library, and has contributed to many others in the scientific Python ecosystem, including SciPy, NetworkX, and Matplotlib. He has taught and presented at the SciPy conference in Austin, EuroSciPy, PyCon Australia, the Advanced Scientific Programming in Python summer school, and Software Carpentry workshops.
Juan is a research fellow at Monash University, with interests in neuroscience and biological image analysis. He also has a particular interest in renewable energy and the environment.
Juan has a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Melbourne and both an MSc in Statistics and PhD in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from the University of Southern California.
Errol Lloyd
Emeritus Trainer
Errol's background is in computational neuroscience. He has been using Python for modelling neurological systems, digital signal processing, data analysis, and empirical research for 7 years.
Prior to joining Python Charmers in 2020, Errol trained fellow researchers from both the sciences and the humanities in a variety of software solutions to research problems, including data and natural language analysis in Python, data visualization, interactive dashboards with front-end JavaScript, and version control and collaboration with git and GitHub.
Errol is an advocate for open source software and reproducible research in science, and is passionate about empowering others to use code in enhancing their productivity. He completed doctoral studies on visual processing in the brain at the University of Melbourne.
Dr Clare Sloggett
Emeritus Trainer
Clare began life in computational physics before moving into genomics. She has research interests in data visualization and algorithms for genomic data. Her current focus is in machine learning for clinical and genomic data. She co-organized the Python in Science and Data Miniconf for PyCon AU from 2015-2017 and regularly gives talks at conferences and community events in genomics and data analytics with Python and other open source tools.
Clare holds a BSc and PhD in computational physics from the University of NSW.
Bianca Gibson
Emeritus Trainer
Bianca is a development team lead with Australian charity Infoxchange, where she uses Python to make a directory that connects people in need with housing, a meal, money help, family violence support, counselling and much more. She has been using Python for over a decade and has mostly worked in the government and not-for-profit sectors. She trained her colleagues at realestate.com.au and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in Python and development tools. She has presented 3 times at PyCon AU and RubyConf AU on topics such as functional programming and an analysis of "imposter syndrome" and fostering healthy self-belief.
Bianca has an undergraduate degree in computer science from Monash University, Australia.
Dr Ned Letcher
Emeritus Trainer
Ned is a data scientist and software engineer who has helped a range of organizations in projects involving machine learning, natural language processing, information retrieval, and data visualization. Ned has been using Python for data analysis, visualization, machine learning, and web development for over 10 years. Ned is a contributor to the Plotly Dash library and an active member of the Dash community.
Ned has a PhD in computational linguistics from the Natural Language Processing group at the University of Melbourne. He also has a Bachelor of Arts (philosophy and linguistics) and a Bachelor of Science with Honours (computer science). Ned regularly presents at local meetups and organises the Melbourne Data Visualisation Meetup.
Testimonials
What participants say about our courses
The course was delivered by trainers who were extremely knowledgeable in their field. It was really good to learn from the best!
Great course. Enjoyed it and will follow up with some practical implementation of some of the work.
One of the best training courses I've been on.
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