Roozbeh Pournader( fa, روزبه پورنادر, ) is a

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

activist and expert on

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

text encoding, text rendering, and

fonts In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

, especially for

bidirectional text A bidirectional text contains two text directionalities, right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR). It generally involves text containing different types of alphabets, but may also refer to boustrophedon, which is changing text direction in ea ...

. He is originally from

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, and is now living in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. After the establishment of the

Persian Wikipedia The Persian Wikipedia ( fa, ویکی‌پدیای فارسی, Wikipediā, Dānešnāme-ye Āzād, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia) is the Persian language version of Wikipedia. The Persian version of Wikipedia was started in December 2003. As o ...

, he became the first administrator of the project. He was a major assistant, participant and

co-founder An organizational founder is a person who has undertaken some or all of the formational work needed to create a new organization, whether it is a business, a charitable organization, a governing body, a school, a group of entertainers, or any othe ...

of the Persian Wikipedia. He was a technical manager at Sharif Linux Project at

Sharif University of Technology Sharif University of Technology (SUT; fa, دانشگاه صنعتی شریف) is a public research university in Tehran, Iran. It is widely considered as the nation's most prestigious and leading institution for science, technology, engineering ...

, and formerly served as a technical manager at

FarsiTeX FarsiTeX is a free Persian/English bidirectional typesetting system based on the TeX system. The FarsiTeX project was initiated by Mohammad Ghodsi at Sharif University of Technology in 1993. The latest (experimental) version of FarsiTeX in 2006 i ...

Education

Pournader was born in

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

, where he obtained his high school diploma in 1996 from

Allameh Helli High Schools Allameh Helli Schools, named after Al-Hilli,''Announcer'' Volume 32 American Association of Physics Teachers - 2002 "The Allameh Helli HS introduced the term "semi-project"," are schools found in various cities of Iran. Students study subjects in d ...

. He graduated from

in the field of computer engineering.

Career

Pournader moved to

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, where he worked at HighTech Passport, Ltd. In 2011 he was hired by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, where he worked as an Internationalization Engineer, focusing on text encoding and rendering,

, and

. He joined the Android Text team in late 2014. , he works as a software engineer for

WhatsApp WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows use ...

Activities

In 2003, Pournader was appointed to provide a report for the

United Nations Development Programme The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

about computer development and computer localization in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

. Pournader is a contributing editor of the

Unicode Standard Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...

, responsible for maintaining Unicode Technical Report #53 (Unicode Arabic Mark Rendering), as well as being one the editors of the core specification. Since January 2020 he has been a Technical Director of the

Unicode Consortium The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intentio ...

Honors

*1995 – Silver medal of

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming and one of the International Science Olympiads for secondary school students. It is the second largest science olympiad, after International Mathematical Olympi ...

*1996 – Gold medal of International Olympiad in Informatics *2009 – bulldog award of

*2020 Gold medal as part of the mdi winning team2001 ACM results - official web-page of Sharif University of Technology (in Persian)
/ref>

References

External links