Center for Humane Technology (San Francisco, CA)

Co-Founder (Current)

Co-Founder & Executive Director (July 2020 - July 2022)

Co-Founder & COO (July 2017 - July 2020)

CHT's team of former tech insiders and cross-disciplinary experts understands how social media platforms are causing widespread harm. We address this by raising awareness for millions of people while mobilizing technologists, executives, investors, and political leaders to create a world where technology supports our shared well-being, sense-making, democracy, and ability to tackle complex global challenges.

Spirit Rock Meditation Center (Woodacre, CA)

Board Member

Dec 2019 - Present

For 26 years, Spirit Rock has led the development and practice of Insight meditation in the United States. Through both deep training and broad education, Spirit Rock brings timeless teachings of wisdom, compassion, and liberation directly to practitioners' lives. Reaching more than 50,000 people each year, Spirit Rock is seeding a culture of non-harming and transforming entire fields of practice in the world.

Mindful Schools (Oakland, CA)

Director of Operations

Jul 2009 - Jun 2010

Responsible for business strategy, marketing, technology, messaging, task organization, and organizational structure.

NVIDIA (Santa Clara, CA)

Manager of Developer Education

Mar 2002 - Sep 2005

I managed three different award-winning book projects: The Cg Tutorial (as co-author) [2002], GPU Gems (as editor) [2003], and GPU Gems 2 [as series editor) [2004]. Managed each book project (including schedule, diagrams, review process, and communication) on a very tight timelines, never missing a publication deadline. Each GPU Gems book had over 100 people involved, both inside and outside NVIDIA.

I was responsible for one-to-many efforts to educate graphics developers how to fully utilize the features and performance of the latest graphics processors), including content and logistics for educational sessions at SIGGRAPH 2003 and SIGGRAPH 2004 that were attended by approximately 1,000 people each year.

IBM (Cambridge, MA)

Intern, Inaugural Extreme Blue Program

Summer 1999

Developed a Java bean called WebExtractor that extracts information from dynamically changing web pages. Was mentioned in an article in Wired magazine.

David S. Black, PhD and Randima Fernando, MS

Oct 2013

This field intervention trial evaluated a 5-week mindfulness-based curriculum on teacher-ratings of 409 students' behavior at a Richmond, CA public elementary school. Teachers reported improved classroom behavior of their students (i.e., paying attention, self-control, participation in activities, and caring/respect for others) that lasted up to 7 weeks post-intervention.

Randima Fernando

Feb 2013

In the 2011-12 school year, Mindful Schools partnered with the University of California, Davis to conduct one of the largest randomized-controlled studies to date on mindfulness and children, involving 937 children and 47 teachers in 3 Oakland public elementary schools. The Mindful Schools curriculum produced statistically significant improvements in paying attention and participation in class activities versus the control group with just 4 hours of mindfulness instruction for the students – a very small, low-cost dose.

Edited by Matt Pharr, Randima Fernando (Series Editor)

Mar 2005

GPU Gems 2 was the best-selling book at the Game Developers Conference 2005 as well as SIGGRAPH 2005. It covers advanced graphics programming techniques as well as how to use the massive computational power of GPUs for other applications such as scientific computing and finance. GPU Gems 2 was a Game Developer Magazine Front Line Award finalist in 2005, and has been translated into Japanese and Chinese.

Edited by Randima Fernando

Mar 2004

GPU Gems was the best-selling book at the Game Developers Conference 2004 as well as SIGGRAPH 2004. It covers advanced computer graphics for real-time applications using GPUs. GPU Gems won a Game Developer Magazine Front Line Award in 2004, and has been translated into Japanese and Chinese.

Randima Fernando - Aug 2005

SIGGRAPH 2005 Sketch

This sketch presents Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS), a new method for generating perceptually accurate soft shadows. It requires no pre- or post-processing, nor additional geometry. PCSS seamlessly replaces a traditional shadow map query (embodying the same advantages: independent of scene complexity, works with alpha testing, displacement mapping, and so on).  It runs fast on recent GPUs, and is used by many shipping games.