Ando designs and evaluates information systems that monitor the state of the planet’s global commons - our rivers, oceans and natural habitats. He designs finance mechanisms that can reward equitable access to those commons, such as marine biodiversity credits to ensure the longevity and well-being of ocean habitats. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the School of Information at UC Berkeley working on designing machine learning models that use satellite imagery to monitor resource extraction at scale, and is a fellow at the Global Policy Lab.

He has worked as a sytems engineer, mixed-media artist, virtual reality pioneer, entrepreneur and filmmaker in past lives. Trained as a chip designer, he spent his formative years working in silicon valley designing hardware to optimize video streaming and off-grid renewable energy systems for communities in east Africa. He created one of the first 360 video capture cameras, created and directed multiple live-action and interactive VR experiences selected at Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival and Geneva International Film Festival. He co-created the world’s first underwater camera trap and software identification system that was used to automatically identify individual manta rays. Ando was the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Ballast Technologies, and he created the field of aquatic virtual reality to study the effects of ‘virtual nature’ on the human brain, and build empathy for the ocean. He holds multiple patents in these fields and has been featured in the New Yorker, CNET, The BBC, Forbes, Discovery, Digital Trends, MIT Technology Review, WIRED, and Freethink amongst others.

Ando Shah Headshot
 

The path towards a cleaner, friendlier, more just, open and amazing planet, not just for humans, but for the entire ecosystem is through building empathy, towards greater compassion

Cannes Film Festival XR
Sundance Film Festival
VR Awards 2019 2020 Finalist
Geneva International Film Festival
Festival Du Nouveau Cinema
World XR Forum 2019

Highlights

 

Publications

  • “Marine Biodiversity Credits: Technical Framework for Protection Credits”. Ando Shah, Maureen Fonseca, Page Lewington; Louisa Durkin, Margaux Filippi, Martin Wainstein. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10182712.

  • Sand Mining Watch: Leveraging Earth Observation Foundation Models to Inform Sustainable Development. In NeurIPS 2023 Workshop On Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning (2023). Ando Shah, Suraj R. Nair, Tom Böhnel, Joshua E. Blumenstock

  • “Mapping Construction Grade Sand: Stepping Stones Towards Sustainable Development”. KDD 2023 Fragile Earth Workshop / ACM COMPASS 2023.

    Ando Shah and Suraj R Nair

  • Marine ecosystems credits: Advanced credit class design to scale ocean conservation finance (2022). doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8271241

    Margaux Filippi, Martin Wainstein, Ando Shah, Axel Constant, Maureen Fonseca, Louisa Durkin

  • Carbon Pricing Oracle - coming soon!

  • “‪Systems, Methods, and Devices for Providing Virtual-Reality or Mixed-Reality Experiences with Special Effects to a User in or under Water‬.” Ananda Shah, Alkis Roufas, Stephen Greenwood, Jim Mayfield, Kyle Mayfield, DE Hannah, Keenan Mayfield. 2023. US Patent 11,714,483

  • “Coordination of Water-Related Experiences with Virtual Reality Content.”. Greenwood, Stephen, Ananda Shah, Alkis Roufas, and Allan Evans. 2022. US Patent 11,262,583

  • “Coordination of Water-Related Experiences with Virtual Reality Content.”. Greenwood, Stephen, Ananda Shah, Alkis Roufas, and Allan Evans. 2020. US Patent 10,782,525 B2

  • “Memory subsystem for counter-based and other applications”. 2014. Nazar, Shadab, Mainak Sen, Wing L. Ho, and Ananda Shah. 2014. United States US8850137B2.

 

Awards & Honors

 

Press Coverage / Talks

 

Patents & Papers

VR Snorkeling

“Shah wanted to spread his newfound love of the ocean to people who might not have access to the same experience, and so developed technology for VR snorkeling. ”

— Design Week UK