Esfandiar Bandari

Past

... at Judge Business School
R&D Project Manager and Principal Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center (Res Inst for Adv Comp Sci)
Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center (Research Inst for Adv Comp Sci)

Research Scientist at General Reality Corp
Research Scientist in R&D Division: at MacDonald Dettwiller & Associates

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Education

Cambridge University Business School
University of British Columbia (and Carnegie-Mellon University)
Stanford University

University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkely

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2 more...

Recommended

7 people have recommended Esfandiar

Connections

258 connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Esfandiar Bandari’s Summary

Esfandiar Bandari, Ph.D.
Personal emails:
e.bandari@cantab.net or e.bandari@gmail.com
Home phone:
650.949.1748

Esfandiar Bandari’s Specialties:

Business/Management
• Projects Management
• Strategy/Business Development & Alliances
• Entrepreneurial/Transformational Leadership
• Team Building & Emotional Intelligence
• Finance and Quants Analysis
• Markets & Product Analysis/Evalutation

Computational/Techincal
• Computational Sciences & Programming (C/C++, Matlab, etc)
• Machine Learning
• Non-linear Signal Processing
• Computer Vision & Image Analysis
• Optimization & Statistics
• Support Vector Machines & Control (KF)

Esfandiar Bandari’s Experience

...

Judge Business School

(Educational Institution; 51-200 employees; Higher Education industry)

2004 — 2005 (1 year)
R&D Project Manager and Principal Scientist

NASA Ames Research Center (Res Inst for Adv Comp Sci)

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

1997 — 2004 (7 years)

Selected Projects
Mars Technology Program: Project manager at Ames and the technical lead on a 2 years multi-million dollars project with JPL on visual odometry and navigation for the Mars Rover.
• Met the two year project milestones in year one.
• invited to lead new projects and to join the program evaluation team.
Machine Learning Group: Joint leadership of a project to develop a novel approach for non-linear prediction, learning and control based on Support Vector Machines.
• Surpassed project’s technical goals and extended its application domains.
• Initiated strategic partnerships with the Aeronautics Division.
Bayesian Super Resolution Team: Parachuted in as a managerial and technical consultant
• Introduced missing critical technologies & supervised scientists and post-docs.
Research Scientist

NASA Ames Research Center (Research Inst for Adv Comp Sci)

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

1997 — 2004 (7 years)

Selected Projects
Collective Intelligence Proj: Worked on multi-agent distributed AI using reinforcement learning, non-cooperative game theory & simulated annealing optimization.
• Implemented concepts & demonstrated applicability to economics of small-world networks (i.e., ‘6 Degrees of Separation’ type models). See Physical Reviews E.
Space Sciences Division: Lead scientist at Ames working on Robotics Arm Camera (RAC) – Mars missions 1998 and 2001.
• Developed confocal imaging algorithms
• Advised USGS team on next generation RAC.
Centre for Bio-Informatics – Virtual Collaborative Clinic (VCC): Collaborated with scientists at Stanford & other medical centres on VCC’s nation-wide demo.
• Invented proprietary algorithms to analyze dynamic ultrasounds.
• Won the 2nd prize in NASA-wide Software of the Year competition.
Other: Consulted on numerous projects, from hyper-spectral signal analysis to 3D modelling of Mars surface from shading to automating helicopter navigation.
Research Scientist

General Reality Corp

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

November 1996 — October 1997 (1 year)

Was a lead scientist on company’s first commercial 3D modelling product.
• Received two US and one international patent.
• Proposed a winning Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) project to Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).
Research Scientist in R&D Division:

MacDonald Dettwiller & Associates

(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

June 1995 — November 1996 (1 year 6 months)

Worked on numerous projects on projects ranging from space and defence applications to forestry and bio-informartics.
• Delivered a project to the European Space Agency 25% under budget and 20% ahead of schedule.
• Developed core analytical algorithms for a Biomedical Confocal Microscope for MIT.
• Won an unsolicited 2 years $1 million project from the Canadian Space Agency.

Esfandiar Bandari’s Education

Cambridge University Business School

MBA , Emph:Strategy, Business & Product Development, Entrepreneurial Leadership, Technology and Consulting , 2005

Other Business & Consulting Engagements
• Dissertation: “Leadership, Teams & Transitions in Entrepreneurial Firms”
• “Flexible Display Technology: Disruptive Applications & Routes to Market”, Strategy consulting & business development for Kodak, UK: comparative technology analysis, identifying potential disruptive products, their routes market, possible strategic alliances, product evolutions, and transformative business models.
• “A Business Case for Responsive Polymers”, Feasibility study and business plan for Vivamer Inc and Chemical Engineering Dept at Cambridge. Analyzed core competencies & developed strategies for: legacy biotech products, products and paths to consumer markets, alliances and eventual exit.
• “Strategic Paths of Growth for YOMP”, strategic analysis and business modelling for YOMP Ltd., an educational and consulting start up.
Also strategy analysis and development group projects for bio-tech/pharma firms (specifically Affymetrix, Astrazeneca & Vivamer).

Activities and Societies:

• Mentoring assistance in Cambridge University Entrepreneurship Summer School
• MBA Olympics (MBAT) participant in HEC France
• Elected MBA Student Rep
• AT Kearny Consulting Competition
University of British Columbia (and Carnegie-Mellon University)

Ph.D. , Computer Science , 1995

PhD in Computational Vision, non-linear image and signal processing, visual echo analysis, multi-evidential matching and registration of images, stationary texture analysis, stereo, motion and stereo-motion analysis, multi-frame motion and stereo analysis, curve smoothing, scale space analysis, medical/MRI image analysis, spectral and hyper-spectral signal analysis, Synthetic Aprature Radar (SAR), change detection, novel simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) methods, robotic mine and halway navigation using laser range finders, and robotic nativigation using sonar/occupancy grid modelling.

Activities and Societies:

Xi Epsilon
Stanford University

M.Sc. , Construction Mangement and Engineering , 1984 — 1985
University of California, Berkeley

M.Sc. , Structural Engineering and Management , 1984

Emphasis on computational analysis and finite element methods
University of California, Berkely

B.Sc. , Dual major: Civil Engineering and Material Science and Engineering , 1982

minor economics

Activities and Societies:

Tau Beta Pi

Additional Information

Esfandiar Bandari’s Interests:

A bit of a news junkie, my interests cover 2 overlapping areas: 1) Business/Econ including finance, VCs & Priv Equity. 2) R&D and tech of any kind. Management & leadership (transformational & transactional). Financial analysis, Emerging markets specially India, S. America, & East Asia. FX, equities, interest rates, derivatives, spiders, hedge funds. Foreign & economic policies. Sig processing, trends, Machine Learning, AI, Kernel Spaces & SVM, optimization & small world models, power laws, Nash & Paerto Equilibria, game theory, comp vision and 3D Recons... Disruptive Techs (eg flexible displays, gene chips. etc): their evaluation, value line analysis, financing, routes to market, alliances, growth & exit. Electronics & new materials, clean tech, nanotech, healthcare and bio, info-tech in markets & life sciences. Friends, soccer, biking, long group hikes, running, sight seeing & sea food. Environmentalism. Moderate & progressive politics. Learning & mentoring.