Fate Favors The Curious
Babak Forutanpour has spent 25 years experience designing technical system that delight. Through his research, Babak has been awarded over 100 patents and featured in four films. He created and helped lead Qualcomm’s employee-driven innovation program from 8 to over 2000 employees on 4 continents. Babak is currently designing and building robots at ecoATM and is Head of Product and Strategy at the Brilliant.co.
What does Fate Favors The Curious mean to Babak?
Babak Forutanpour responds ” I think we are so much more than our titles. We are not VPs, or Staff, or Interns. We are individuals motivated (hopefully) by our passions. Mine is to feed my curiosity. This simple mantra has been my compass as I navigate this world for the last 47 years.”
Episode 63…Babak Forutanpour…Fate Favors The Curious
A few months back I was invited to connect with Babak Forutanpour. After reading the first two sentences of his profile…25 years experience designing technical system that delight. His research has been awarded over 100 patents and featured in four films…I invited him to appear on the Invention Stories Podcast. Babak wrote back”Hi Robert, thanks for invite. I Would love to share with your listeners a little about my 110 patents, starting an innovation club at Qualcomm, being a contestant on ABC The Toy Box and my 8 products I’m looking to license or bring to market at www.TheBrilliant.co
Coming Soon…Episode 63…Babak Forutanpour…Fate Favors The Curious on Invention Stories on YouTube
Work Experience (from Linkedin profile)
ecoATM Gazelle
Principal, Research and Development
Mar 2015 – Present
San Diego, California
Privileged to be part of a team that designs and improves how the company’s 3,000+ robots located nationwide value consumer electronics for instant payment. Currently lead on designing next generation electro-mechanical core for 2019 domestic and international roll-out.
The Brilliant Co
Head of Product and Strategy
Jul 2014 – Present
www.TheBrilliant.co
Manage a team of designers and engineers who wake up every day driven to make products so good your friends will wrestle you for them. Our patented inventions have been featured on ABC The Toy Box, NBC Today Show, local FOX and CBS news, Gizmodo, Inc. magazine, Daily Mail and Star Magazine. Currently in development are TILTD, The Tooth Diary, PRESSD, ONEderball, The Baker Buddy, KLEAN and LifeGoesPOP!
Along with bringing our own products to market, we work with inventors to help bring their creations to store shelves everywhere.
Qualcomm
R&D Staff Engineer/Manager, Office of the Chief Scientist
Feb 2009 – Mar 2015
Greater San Diego Area
Part of a unique R&D team reporting to one of the company’s eight founders where members play both an engineering and business development role bringing compelling user experiences to market through a 4-stage venture funding process.
QCT Multimedia
Staff Engineer
2004 – Jul 2009
San Diego, California
Lead or team member on several image processing and computer vision based systems:
Walt Disney Animation Studios
VFX Technical Director, Mulan 2, Tarzan 2
Mar 2003 – Jul 2004
Burbank, California
Developed numerous tools for artists in C, C++, Mel, Python. SoftEdge Maya plugin allowed for CGIelements to be seamlessly composited with traditional hand drawn elements by applying a gradientto the alpha channel of the exterior and self occluding interior silhouettes of 3D objects at rendertime.
Minds@Work
Head of Software
Feb 2001 – Feb 2003
Lead Software Engineer for hard-disk based handheld device for use by digital photographers to archive photos on the go. Optimized performance of device’s GUI, power charging algorithm, and file transfer system. Designed and implemented a TV graphical user interface for MovieWallet video rental system to be deployed at Shell gas stations.
Digital Domain
Technical Director, X-MEN
Apr 1999 – Feb 2001
Venice, California
Joined team first as a consultant to complete hero shot in finale of film. Responsible for all visual elements of Wolverine character (played by Hugh Jackman). Wrote several Renderman shaders to generate photorealistic leather, hair, skin and metal claws. Implemented several PERL scripts to optimize rendering for beauty, shadow matte pass.
Warner Bros. Feature Animation
Technical Director, The Iron Giant, Space Jam, Quest for Camelot
Jan 1995 – Mar 1999
Glendale, California
Managed a budget of a quarter million dollars to build out the division’s entire gray scale, color, and down shooter equipped digital scanning department. Upon successful completion, began writing numerous tools in C, Mel and Renderman shaders for use by artists for 3 feature films. Dabbled in 3D modeling and animation which proved fortuitous as VFX Supervisor needed wannabe artists to help meet final push. Built the division’s Intranet as a hobby and way to learn web technologies.
Walt Disney Feature Animation
Software Engineer, The Lion King
Apr 1993 – Oct 1993
Burbank, California
Developed numerous tools in C to improve production workflow. Used modified Sobel edgedetection and Fibonacci search to auto-focus each of four motion-controlled, quarter million dollarliquid-cooled digital cameras used to scan background artwork for feature films.
Click here for Babak Forutanpour Linkedin Profile.
Education
University of California, Los Angeles
MS Degree
FComputer Science
Graduated
Thesis: Finding Near-Optimal Paths In Graphs Efficiently
University of California, San Diego
Bachelor of Science
Computer Science
Graduated
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