Ando is a PhD student at the School of Information at UC Berkeley, fellow at the Global Policy Lab, Digital Transformation of Development (DToD) supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Mozilla Technology Fund and previously at Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab.

Ando’s current research focuses on using big data and machine learning to understand and ameliorate human impacts on ecosystems. His work is situated at the intersection of environmental justice, deep learning and sustainability. Ando develops geospatial machine learning methods and applies them to solve real world policy problems related to environmental degradation, resource extraction, socio-economic development and climate change mitigation & adaptation efforts.

Previously, he has worked as a systems 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
 

Sand Mining Watch

"These awardees are leading the way in demonstrating how open source AI can be used to help, not harm, the environment.”

Mehan Jayasuriya, Senior Program Officer at Mozilla

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

Highlights

 

News

  • April 2025

  • March 2025

    • Submitted our paper “Exploring the Social Cost of Carbon for Internal Carbon Pricing: Insights from a Technology Probe” for publication, currently under review. Preprint coming soon

  • January 2025

    • Completed a 6-month research fellowship with the amazing AI For Good Lab, and will sorely miss living in Nairobi, Kenya. Getting to work with Girmaw Abebe Tadesse and Akram Zaytar has been such a treat!

    • Paper is in progress - updates soon!

  • July 2024

    • Started a research fellowship at Microsoft’s AI For Good Lab in Nairobi, Kenya - working with The Nature Conservancy on using remote sensing and ML to assess and map water-saving interventions for rice agriculture. Rice consumes a massive proportion of humanity’s freshwater budget and produces ~20% of our methane, making this an exciting study!

  • June 2024

    • I presented some of my work at the Zhu Lab at the Technical University of Munich, to a set of talented and vested researchers

  • April 2024

    • I am honored to be awarded the DToD fellowship supported by the NSF!

  • March 2024

    • I am advising the talented Leonard Waldmann from the Technical University of Munich. We will be working on sensor-agnostic learning for earth observation.

 

Publications

  • “Panopticon: Advancing Any-Sensor Foundation Models for Earth Observation.” Ando Shah*, Waldmann, Leonard*, Yi Wang, Nils Lehmann, Adam J. Stewart, Zhitong Xiong, Xiao Xiang Zhu, Stefan Bauer, and John Chuang. 2025. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2503.10845.

  • “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

 
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. ”