His primary interest in Python is for its application for data visualization and for rapid development and testing of signal processing techniques for weather radar applications. He has also been a developer for the Matplotlib project since 2008, giving an introductory Matplotlib tutorial at SciPy 2010. Among Ryan's contributions to Matplotlib are improvements to its spectral analysis routines, wind barb support (for the meteorological community), and, most recently, simplified support for creating and saving animations.