Dehann Fourie
Founder at NavAbility(TM) by WhereWhen.ai
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDehann Fourie is a founder and research engineer with 12 years of experience specializing in navigation, guidance and control, and non‑Gaussian state estimation for robotic platforms ranging from solar UAVs and deep‑ocean AUVs to test satellites on the ISS and Boston Dynamics humanoids. He co-founded JuliaRobotics and NavAbility to advance open‑source high‑performance robotics software and commercialize cutting‑edge estimation methods, blending academic rigor from MIT/CSAIL with hands‑on systems engineering. His work spans theory—solving Chapman‑Kolmogorov transit integral challenges—to practical deployments across defense, space, and marine domains. Based in San Francisco, he pairs a rare combination of PhD‑level research, product founding, and fielded algorithm implementation, and has helped translate advanced inertial and multimodal SLAM ideas into working systems.
12 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Electrical and Electronics Engineering at North-West University/Noordwes-UniversiteitDoctor of Philosophy (PhD), Electrical, Electronic & Computer Science Engineering and Oceanographic Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Electrical, Electronic & Computer Science Engineering and Oceanographic Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyFinance, Finance at Harvard Business School Executive EducationUniversity of Johannesburg 
Stackoverflow
21reputation
2kreached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (200)
probabilistic-programming10
solver10
robotics10
imu10
camera10
localization10
julia10
distributions10
filter10
lidar10
sum-product10
estimate10
apriltags10
programming-language10
approximate10
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
JuliaRobotics/Arena.jl
Feb 2018 - Feb 2023
Collection 3D visualization tools associated with the Caesar.jl and RoME.jl robot navigation packages
Contributions:4 releases, 1 review, 206 commits in 5 years
robot-navigationvisualizationroboticscaesar3d-visualization
JuliaRobotics/IncrementalInference.jl
Apr 2016 - Jan 2023
Clique recycling non-Gaussian (multi-modal) factor graph solver; also see Caesar.jl.
Contributions:32 releases, 191 reviews, 3822 commits in 6 years 10 months
filtering-algorithmjulia-languageisamgaussianrecycling
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