curriculum vitae
Amin Bandali
Last updated 16 May 2025
site
https://kelar.org/~bandali
email
[email protected]
[email protected]
gpg key
https://kelar.org/~bandali/bandali-pubkey.txt
phone
upon request via email
Short Bio
---------
As a computing scientist and activist for computer user freedom,
Amin Bandali is an active participant in various free software
projects and communities including the GNU Project and the
Free Software Foundation, the Debian and Trisquel GNU/Linux
distributions, the EmacsConf conference, and GNU Canada, the
Canadian chapter of the GNU Project. Bandali holds a degree of
Master of Mathematics in Computer Science from the University of
Waterloo.
Summary of Qualifications
-------------------------
- Experience in building software in diverse areas and platforms
using various programming languages such as C, C++, Python, and
Haskell.
- Creating and maintaining packages for programs of varying
size and complexity for package systems of several GNU/Linux
distributions including Debian, Ubuntu, Trisquel, and Fedora.
- Passionate about applying scientific and engineering methods in
design and implementation of software systems.
- Using formal specification techniques to find
specification-level bugs early in the design stage
rather than implementation.
- GNU/Linux system administration on both the client and the
server side.
- Problem-solving and communication skills, honed through research
and teaching roles held in graduate school, as well as holding
tutorials discussing complex concepts with fellow students and
peers throughout undergraduate studies and high school.
- Organizational and teamwork skills, strengthened thanks to
community service in form of volunteer activities including
organizing the EmacsConf conference and volunteer work for
charities such as the Free Software Foundation and St. Brigid's
Summer Camp.
Education
---------
Master of Mathematics in Computer Science,
University of Waterloo, 2020
Research focus:
formal logic, model checking, verification
Thesis:
A Comprehensive Study of Declarative Modelling Languages
Supervisor:
Prof. Nancy A. Day
GPA:
3.7/4.0
Bachelor of Science with Honours in Computer Science,
York University, 2017
Favourite courses:
System Specification & Refinement, Software Requirements
Engineering, Software Design, Operating Systems, Computational
Complexity, Design & Analysis of Algorithms
GPA:
7.84/9.0
Research Interests
------------------
formal logic, model checking, theorem proving, type checking,
verification
Publications & Presentations
----------------------------
The complete bibliography of my publications is available
as a BibTeX bibliography file, from
https://kelar.org/~bandali/bandali.bib.
Papers
A Comparison of the Declarative Modelling Languages B, DASH,
and TLA+
Ali Abbassi, Amin Bandali, Nancy A. Day, Jose Serna
8th IEEE International Model-Driven Requirements
Engineering Workshop, MoDRE@RE 2018
Copyright (c) 2018 IEEE. All Rights Reserved. Sadly.
pdf:
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2018/08/20/modre2018-declarative.pdf
bib:
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2018/08/20/modre2018-declarative.bib
models:
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~nday/artifacts/2018-modre/
Theses
A Comprehensive Study of Declarative Modelling Languages
Amin Bandali
MMath Thesis, University of Waterloo, David R. Cheriton
School of Computer Science, July 2020.
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2020/06/30/mmath.html
Talks
State of the shared GNU infrastructure
Amin Bandali
Would have been presented at the GNU 40th anniversary celebration,
27 September 2023.
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2023/09/27/gnu40-infra.html
What's new in Jami
Amin Bandali
Presented at the LibrePlanet 2023 Conference, 18 March 2023.
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2023/03/18/jami-2023.html
The Net beyond the web
Amin Bandali
Presented at the LibrePlanet 2022 Conference, 20 March 2022.
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2022/03/20/net-beyond-web.html
Jami and how it empowers users
Amin Bandali
Presented at the LibrePlanet 2021 Conference, 20 March 2021.
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2021/03/20/jami-empowers-users.html
The Magic of Specifications and Type Systems
Amin Bandali, Simon Hudon, Jonathan S. Ostroff
Slides presented at the Canadian Undergraduate Computer
Science Conference 2017, University of Toronto, Canada,
June 15-17, 2017.
Poster presented at the Lassonde Undergraduate Summer Student
Research Conference, York University, Toronto, Canada,
15 August 2017.
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2017/06/17/magic.html
Introducing YULUG
Amin Bandali
Slides introducing YULUG -- (GNU/)Linux User Group at York
University -- presented at a Computing Students Hub (CSHub)
tech talk at York University, Toronto, Canada, 12 February
2015.
https://kelar.org/~bandali/2015/02/12/yulug.html
Work & Research Experience
--------------------------
Internet Archive
winter 2025-present | Software Engineer (Search)
As part of the Internet Archive's Core Infrastructure Engineering
team, I work on various aspects of the Archive's search systems.
Canonical
fall 2022-2024 | Software Engineer
As the sole maintainer of Firefox in Ubuntu Desktop, my duties
included porting, debugging, and building the Firefox source
code for the architectures supported by Ubuntu Desktop
(e.g. amd64 and arm64) and triaging reported issues, to ensure
new releases of Firefox with security fixes and new features
are delivered to the millions of users who rely on Firefox as
their default web browser.
I also worked on other aspects of Ubuntu and its desktop,
including maintaining various GNOME applications and libraries
in Ubuntu and upstream in Debian, and resolving package build
issues to ensure the current Ubuntu development release
continues to build and install correctly.
Savoir-faire Linux
fall 2020-2022 | Free Software Consultant
| Consultant en logiciel libre
As part of the Jami core development team at Savoir-faire
Linux, I worked on many aspects of Jami including maintenance
and bug fixes for Jami's now-deprecated GTK GUI; maintaining
packages of Jami and some of its dependencies for the Deb,
Snap, and RPM package systems to bring the latest release of
Jami to users across several GNU/Linux distributions including
Debian, Ubuntu, Trisquel, Fedora, and openSUSE; and creating
and maintaining Jenkins pipelines for continually testing,
validating, and deploying various parts of Jami's code bases.
I also helped write, edit, and publish several technical
articles on the Jami blog about the internals of Jami, worked
on improving Jami's documentation, and served as community
liaison between the Jami core team and the wider free software
community of Jami users to help facilitate communications and
relations between the two.
Free Software Foundation (FSF)
spring 2020 | Intern
Working with the FSF tech team in a sysadmin role on a variety
of tasks including installation of the Sourcehut free software
forge on the FSF infrastructure for evaluation for the FSF
forge project, as well as a series of enhancements for
www.gnu.org.
Cheriton School of Science, University of Waterloo
winter 2018-spring 2020 | TA, IA, RA [*]
SE 465 (Software Testing and Quality Assurance):
TA in winter 2020
SE 212 (Logic and Computation):
IA in Fall 2019, TA in fall 2018
SE 463 (Software Requirement Specification and Analysis):
TA in spring 2019 and 2018
CS 136 (Elementary Algorithm Design and Data Abstraction):
TA in winter 2018
[*] Teaching Assistant (marking exams and assignments),
Instructional Apprentice (holding tutorials and marking),
Research Assistant (doing research for/with supervisor)
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, York
University
fall 2017 | Teaching Assistant
EECS 1012 (Net-Centric Introduction to Computing):
TA in fall 2017, running labs and marking labs and exams
Software Engineering Lab, York University
summer 2017 | Research Assistant
Worked on an implementation of Lampsort in Eiffel.
Extended the mathmodels library, implementing a rational
class for working with arbitrarily large rational numbers.
summer 2016 | Research Student
Worked on Literate Unit-B, the verifier for Unit-B, a new
formal method focused on formal verification of reactive,
concurrent and distributed systems. From the Literate Unit-B
codebase (written in Haskell), decoupled the logic module and
used it to build Unit-B Web, a web interface using Literate
Unit-B to do predicate calculus proofs. Unit-B Web, also
written in Haskell, supports the LaTeX syntax of the Unit-B
logic, renders user input on the page, and calls the sequent
prover of the logic module, which uses the Z3 SMT solver to
check the validity of user input.
Separated Literate Unit-B's type checker from its parser in a
large refactoring, allowing easier substitution of other type
checking algorithms, and in preparation for implementing
subtyping.
Lotek Wireless Inc.
winter & summer 2016 | Software Developer
Designed and developed an Employee Portal web application in
C# and the MVC framework, used by employees for accessing
various data catalogs and archives.
summer 2015 | Computer Programmer
Designed and implemented various applications in C# and C for
analyzing and testing a satellite pass prediction algorithm
for predicting the pass windows of Argos satellites, for
scheduling send times of data collected by the company's
wildlife tracking products.
Athlete Builder
2013-2014 | Software Developer
Developed the Backend of Athlete Builder platform in C# and
MVC.
Key role in development of the platform core.
Developed the alpha version of Athlete Builder Android
application in Java.
Skills
------
Programming languages
C, C++, Haskell, Emacs Lisp, Guile Scheme, Python, Eiffel, Bash,
C#, Java, JavaScript
Tools
GNU Emacs, Git, Alloy, TLA+, ProB, LaTeX, continuous integration
systems
Platforms
GNU/Linux distributions including Trisquel (Ubuntu deriv.),
Parabola (Arch deriv.), GNU Guix, Debian
Languages
English (native proficiency; IELTS: 9.0/9.0),
French (classroom study),
Persian (mother tongue)
Community Service
-----------------
GNU Project
Assistant GNUisance and member of the GNU Advisory Committee.
GNU (co-)maintainer of GNUzilla and IceCat and Jami.
GNU Emacs developer and co-maintainer of ERC.
Savannah hacker and GNU webmaster.
Curator of the monthly GNU Spotlight.
GNU Persian translation team leader.
Founder of GNU Canada.
Debian GNU/Linux
fall 2023-present | Debian Developer
I became a Debian Developer in November 2023 with the support and
advocacy of my main sponsors Petter Reinholdtsen and Jeremy Bícha.
As a DD, I maintain Debian's jami, opendht, and restinio packages,
help maintain several GNOME packages as a member of the Debian
GNOME team, and maintain and contribute to the Debian packaging
for various GNU Emacs packages as a member of the Debian Emacsen
team.
I'm grateful to Tobias Frost, the Application Manager for my DD
process, for sharing many helpful pieces of information and neat
tricks when it comes to working in and around the various parts of
Debian as a Developer.
winter 2023-fall 2023 | Debian Maintainer
I became a Debian Maintainer in February 2023 with the support
and advocacy of my sponsor Petter Reinholdtsen for my application.
As a DM, I maintained Debian's jami, opendht, and restinio
packages, and I helped maintain several GNOME packages as a member
of the Debian GNOME team, working with Jeremy Bícha and other
GNOME team members. I was also a member of the Debian Emacsen
team, where I contributed a few changes.
In September 2023 I applied to become a Debian Developer with
upload rights.
fall 2020-winter 2023 | Debian Contributor
I first started contributing to Debian in 2020, sending patches
for the opendht and jami (ring) packages. I was eventually able
to take over the maintenance of these two packages in 2023, after
a long period of stagnation due to absence/unavailability of the
packages' former maintainer, and got them in good shape and
up-to-date again in time for the Bookworm release, with help
from my kind sponsor Petter Reinholdtsen.
Trisquel GNU/Linux
spring 2020-present
I am a contributor to Trisquel GNU/Linux since 2020 starting with
the Trisquel 9.0 "Etiona" release and onwards.
EmacsConf conference
2019-present
Core organizer and systems administrator for the conference's
(wholly free) infrastructure.
2015
One of the organizers and in charge of setting up
and maintaining vital pieces of infrastructure.
Computer Science Club (CSC) of the University of Waterloo
Served as the CSC System Administrator in Winter and Spring
2020. Present member of the CSC Systems Committee, overseeing
and maintaining a large fleet of GNU/Linux servers for CSC
members, as well as running the CSC mirror for free software
projects.
Notable projects include launching the CSC web IRC client
as part of an effort in bringing modern user freedom- and
privacy-respecting communication tools to club members.
Volunteer work
fall 2022-present | Volunteer for Savoir-faire Linux
I help with various aspects of the Jami project as a
volunteer.
spring 2013 | Application Developer for VONICAL Inc.
Worked on development of the Employment Accessibility Resource
Network (EARN) portal using the Anahita social networking
platform, written in PHP and running on GNU/Linux.
winter 2013 | Mobile & Web Developer for Hire Works Inc.
Worked on a variety of web and mobile development projects for
Hire Works.
summer 2012 | Web Developer for St. Brigid's Summer Camp
Redesigned and revamped the codebase for the photo gallery
section of the camp's website in PHP and JavaScript.
