Behdad Esfahbod
Behdad Esfahbod | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 27, 1982 |
| Alma mater | University of Toronto, MBA (2012) University of Toronto, M.S. Computer Science (2006) Sharif University, B.S. Computer Engineering (2003) |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Employer(s) | Meta; Google; Red Hat; GNOME; FarsiWeb |
| Known for | HarfBuzz, Pango |
Seyed Behdad Esfahbod MirHosseinZadeh Sarabi[1] (Persian: سید بهداد اسفهبد میر حسینزاده سرابی; born September 27, 1982) is an Iranian-Canadian software engineer and free software developer, best known for creating HarfBuzz. He was a software engineer at Facebook from February 2019 to July 2020, before which he was a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google from 2010, and earlier at Red Hat.
Education
Esfahbod holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology.[2]
While in high school, Esfahbod won a silver at the 1999 International Olympiad in Informatics[3] and a gold in 2000.[4]
Career
Esfahbod was among the founders of Sharif FarsiWeb Inc., which carried out internationalization and standardization projects related to open source and the Persian language. He was a member of the board of directors of the GNOME Foundation from 2007[5] to 2010,[6] serving as president from 2008[7] to 2009.
Esfahbod is an expert in font engineering and internationalization. He has contributed to many open-source projects, including the Cairo, fontconfig, HarfBuzz, and Pango libraries, which are standard components of the GNOME desktop environment, the Google Chrome web browser, and the LibreOffice suite. He received an O'Reilly Open Source Award in 2013 for his work on HarfBuzz.[8]
Detention in Iran
Esfahbod was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence unit during a 2020 visit to Tehran. He was then held at Evin Prison, where he was interrogated in solitary confinement for seven days. Iranian security forces released him after he agreed to spy on associates upon returning to the United States.[9][10][11]
Personal life
He has a brother and a sister.[12] He is pansexual.[13]
References
- ^ "Patent US20130265237 – System and method for modifying content display size". Google Patents. Retrieved March 26, 2016.
- ^ "Resume of Behdad Esfahbod" (PDF). October 14, 2014. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 16, 2005. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
- ^ "IOI'99 in Antalya-Belek, Turkey". tue.nl. Archived from the original on September 19, 2021. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
- ^ "data". olympiads.win.tue.nl. Archived from the original on September 19, 2021. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
- ^ "About the GNOME Foundation". GNOME Foundation. January 15, 2007. Archived from the original on February 9, 2007.
- ^ "About the GNOME Foundation". The GNOME Foundation. Archived from the original on April 10, 2010. Retrieved April 24, 2025.
- ^ Villa, Luis (April 20, 2008). "Minutes for Directors Meeting of Feb. 13th, 2008". GNOME Mail Services. Archived from the original on December 18, 2014. Retrieved April 23, 2025.
- ^ "OReilly Open Source Awards: Open Source Convention – O'Reilly OSCON, July 22–26, 2013 in Portland, OR". oscon.com. Archived from the original on June 18, 2015. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
- ^ "بهداد اسفهبد: اطلاعات سپاه در ازای همکاری در خارج از کشور دست از سرم برداشت". BBC News فارسی (in Persian). August 18, 2020.
- ^ Fassihi, Farnaz (August 21, 2020). "He Was Iran's Homegrown Tech Star. The Guards Saw a Blackmail Opportunity". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 19, 2021. Retrieved August 22, 2020.
- ^ "Iranian-Canadian Targeted by IRGC: The Case of Behdad Esfahbod". NIAC. Archived from the original on September 19, 2021. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
- ^ Esfahbod. "The Esfahbods". esfahbod.info. Retrieved November 7, 2024.
- ^ "Behdad Esfahbod - IMDb". IMDb. Retrieved November 7, 2024.
External links