BUZZ & BIZ OF GEOSPATIAL INNOVATION

Payam Banazadeh is CEO & Founder of Capella Space, a Silicon Valley company building the largest constellation of commercial SAR satellites in order to provide hourly monitoring services of anywhere in the globe. Payam holds a management degree from Stanford University and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Aerospace Engineering from University of Texas. Prior to starting Capella Space Payam was a project manager and flight systems engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and has been awarded NASA Mariner Award, NASA Discovery Award, and NASA Formulation Award. Most recently Payam was selected to be on the prestigious “Forbes 30 under 30” list in 2017 and Capella has been recognized by New York Times, Bloomberg, and recently Inc magazine as one of the top 25 disruptive companies in the world.

As the Chief Executive Officer of GroundTruth, Sunil Kumar is focused on continuing the company’s market expansion, growth, and innovation. Kumar, a founder of GroundTruth, previously served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer, driving double-digit growth and profitability.

Before his start at GroundTruth (formerly xAd), Sunil was a founder of V-Enable, which provided voice search solutions to a host of carriers including Verizon and Sprint Cricket. Prior to that, Sunil was network architect at Cisco, working on router products and IOS architecture. He also worked at the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Labs and participated in the rise of the storage over IP industry, working with industry leaders to bring quality technology to the market.

Sunil received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Delhi, his MS in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire and his MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

As Mobileye’s North American Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, Uri Tamir leads the development of new markets for Mobileye’s latest advancements in collision avoidance technology, sensor’s data, and mapping. Uri oversees Mobileye’s push for smarter and safer roads and represent Mobileye in numerous research projects and partnerships with US DOT, State DOTs, and cities in North America.