ABOUT ZENDAR

Zendar was founded in 2017 by Vinayak Nagpal and Jimmy Wang, both Ph.Ds from UC Berkeley. Vinayak had spent several years in radio astronomy and Jimmy had spent time building high resolution street level mapping systems. Many of Zendar’s innovations can be traced back to techniques used in radio astronomy.

It was also during this time that the FCC opened up 77-81 GHz spectrum for automotive radars. Processors started to become cheaper and powerful enough to apply advanced radar signal processing techniques in the automotive context . In-vehicle data connectivity technology reached maturity as cameras started adopting central computing. Several factors came together that led to the founding of Zendar.

Vinayak Nagpal, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder

Vinayak co-founded Zendar in May 2017 to develop advanced imaging radars for autonomous systems. Prior to Zendar, Vinayak developed instrumentation for radio astronomy imaging that enabled projects like the first sub-millimeter images of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Vinayak got his PhD in EE from UC Berkeley and has held research positions at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Nokia Bell Labs.

Jimmy Wang, Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder

Jimmy co-founded Zendar in May 2017 to develop advanced imaging radar systems for autonomous systems. Prior to Zendar, Jimmy was a Lead Research Engineer at HERE Technology (previously Earthmine, acquired by HERE Nokia in 2011), where he led the software and algorithm development for processing city- scale 3D street level imageries.

Jimmy obtained his PhD in Vision Science from UC Berkeley, focusing on unsupervised machine learning and computer vision.

Sunil Thomas, Chief Business Officer

Sunil, a long term automotive and semiconductor executive, joined Zendar in May 2021 as its Chief Business Officer. Prior to Zendar, Sunil was the Vice President and GM for Synaptics' Video Interface business where he led the acquisition and integration of DisplayLink (a UK Corporation). At Synaptics, Sunil was also the VP of automotive business unit that was built from the ground up under Sunil’s leadership. Before Synaptics, Sunil was the GM for Cypress Semiconductors’ Automotive business, where Sunil was part of the team that transformed Cypress into an automotive company. Prior to Cypress, Sunil held various GM positions with Texas instruments. Sunil holds advanced engineering degrees and an MBA.

Antonio Puglielli, VP of Engineering

Antonio joined Zendar in 2018 and is currently the VP of Engineering, leading both hardware and software development teams. Antonio received his PhD in electrical engineering at the University of California Berkeley, where he worked on chip, system, and signal processing development for mm-wave communication link.

Uwe Lüthin, Chief Architect

Uwe joined Zendar in 2021 as a Chief Architect and leads R&D efforts in the German office, which includes design for mass production and defining radar signal processing chains. Prior to Zendar, Uwe worked for Continental and subsequently ZF, and has a combined 21 years of experience in the automotive radar industry.

Uwe spearheaded development of the Continental ARS300, and more recently the imaging radar at ZF. In doing so, Uwe has helped defined NXPs first microcontroller (Racerunner) with an integrated signal processing engine and also shaped the RF-CMOS chip development from its infancy. Uwe received his master in electrical engineering at the University of Ravensburg.