Seyed Behdad Esfahbod MirHosseinZadeh Sarabi (; born September 27, 1982) is an Iranian-Canadian software engineer and

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

developer. He is best known for creating

HarfBuzz HarfBuzz (loose transliteration of Persian language, Persian calque ''harf-bāz'', literally "open type") is a software library for supporting text shaping, which is the process of converting Unicode text to glyph indices and positions. The ne ...

. He was a software engineer at

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

from February 2019 until July 1, 2020; before that he was a Senior Staff Software Engineer at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

since 2010, and before that at

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

Education

Esfahbod holds an MBA from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, Rotman School of Management and a Master of Science degree from the

in Computer Science, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Sharif University in Computer Engineering, Software. While at high school Esfahbod won a

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

in the 1999

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming competition and one of the International Science Olympiads Student competition, for secondary school students. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Pravetz, Bulgar ...

and then

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

in 2000.

Notable projects

Esfahbod was among the founders of Sharif FarsiWeb Inc. which carried out internationalization and standardization projects related to open source and Persian language. He was a member of board of directors at

GNOME Foundation GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Orinda, California, United States, which works to coordinate the efforts in the GNOME project. Purpose The GNOME Foundation works to further the goal of the GNOME project: to create a co ...

from 2007 to 2010, serving as the president from 2008 to 2009. Esfahbod is an expert on font engineering and internationalization, a frequent speaker at workshops and conferences. He has contributed to many open-source projects. Among the projects he has led are the

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

fontconfig Fontconfig (or fontconfig) is a free software program library designed to provide configuration, enumeration and substitution of fonts to other programs. Fontconfig was originally written and maintained by Keith Packard, and is currently maint ...

, and

Pango Pango (stylized as Παν語) is a text (i.e. glyph) layout engine library which works with the HarfBuzz shaping engine for displaying multi-language text. Full-function rendering of text and cross-platform support is achieved when Pango is use ...

libraries, which are standard parts of the

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

desktop environment, the

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

web browser, and the

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...

suite of programs. He received an O'Reilly Open Source Award in 2013 for his work on HarfBuzz.

Detention in Iran

Esfahbod was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence echelon during a 2020 visit to Tehran. He was then moved to

Evin prison Evin Prison () is a prison located in the Evin neighborhood of Tehran, Iran. The prison has been the primary site for detaining Iran's political prisoners since 1972, before and after the Iranian Revolution, in a purpose-built wing nicknamed "E ...

, where he was psychologically pressured and interrogated in solitary confinement for 7 days. They downloaded all his private data from his devices. Iranian security forces let him go based on his promise to spy on his friends once he was back in the United States.

Personal life

He has a brother and a sister. He is

pansexual Pansexuality is sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction towards people of all genders, or regardless of their sex or gender identity. Pansexual people may refer to themselves as gender-blind, asserting that gender and sex are not determ ...

References

External links

Behdad Esfahbod's personal homepageBehdad Esfahbod's Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Esfahbod, Behdad 1982 births Living people Open source people Free software programmers GNOME developers People involved with Unicode Canadian engineers Iranian engineers Canadian people of Iranian descent People from Sari, Iran University of Toronto alumni Sharif University of Technology alumni Facebook employees Google employees Red Hat employees Iranian software developers