Terrible news indeed.

R.I.P Dr. Ashjaee

oh, wow.?ÿ what a shame.?ÿ A major loss to the survey world.?ÿ?ÿ

Wow, what a loss. A key driver of Trimble, Ashtech, Topcon, and Javad GPS. Huge loss for the surveying community.

He will be missed! I would not be the surveyor I am today without him. I learned everything I know about GPS from him or friends I made due to my friendship with Javad.?ÿ

An awful turn of events.?ÿ I'm very sorry for his family.

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Sad. For his family, for the surveying community, and for the general state of the world. He made enormous contributions to spatial gps data everywhere.

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Condolence to his family. His contribution to GNSS will be remembered.

Among the many dozens of patents pertaining to GNSS held by Javad is one outlier:?ÿ a cigar chiller.?ÿ I guess you just can't keep an inventive mind from inventing.

We're sending comforting thoughts, prayers and hugs to Dr. Javads family, friends, and loved ones. ?????ÿ

Man that is terrible news. Sad to hear.

I think majority of the GPS units that the companies that I have worked for are from his Ashtech product line.

Very sad news.

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RIP Dr Ashjee

RIP Dr Ashjaee. We really missed you..!

Sad news.?ÿ He was a brilliant man.

Shocking news for me, a great man, and a pioneer in GNSS.?ÿ I feel fortunate to have worked with him in the early development years and considered him a friend.?ÿ Peace and condolences to his family, friends, and peers.?ÿ

Truely a loss for the whole surveying community, whether they are JAVAD GNSS customers or not. ?ÿ

It was remarkable that an ordinary surveyor such as myself could send a note, and get a reply from the father of surveying GPS.

I think he strived every day to improve the surveying profession.

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COVID finally hits home - RIP my friend.

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http://www.javad.com/jgnss/javad/news/pr20200531.html ?ÿ

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https://insidegnss.com/javad-ashjaee-1949-2020/ ?ÿ

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https://www.geospatialworld.net/news/dr-javad-ashjaee-founder-of-javad-gnss-passed-away-in-moscow/

We're still in shock. There is a lot I could say, but it's hard to figure out what the most important thing is, or the best memory or story. There were quite a few. I first met him in June of 2013 in San Jose. I never expected it to be the foundation of such a meaningful relationship, but in October of that year my wife and I went to Moscow to meet his team. We sat at a long boardroom table and spent five days laying out the initial strategy for the Triumph-LS software. (Javad was an awesome host and sent my wife all over Moscow while I "worked"). He always had an unwavering confidence that he could bring something better to the market than what existed, so he insisted he develop his own software instead of importing software from a third party.

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I kept telling my wife that this consulting arrangement would not last forever, but I continued testing and making recommendations and he and his team were always so good to hear me out even if on occasion they would reject or table my advice. Javad added more surveyors to the team and we've slowly moved from consulting to support to sales. Still doing a bit of all of it but with emphasis changing somewhat along the way. We had almost weekly conference calls with the team in Moscow to discuss product development. Javad loved debate. He would often throw out a piece of red meat just to have something to argue, always with a sly grin.

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The time in Moscow was a part of an ongoing transformation for me. I love America. It's the greatest country in the world, but I have met people from all over the planet and visited several countries. You know, most people want to live and raise their families and see the world become a little better than they found it. There are some exceptions, but people are generally good. As a youngster we would have drills for nuclear attacks. The USSR was a villain. I have no love for communism still, but the people of Russia are great and spending time there sitting with them in a boardroom talking about one of my favorite subjects in the world: surveying, was surreal. This was part of Javad's vision when he approached the Russians in the late eighties to develop a receiver that would track GPS and Glonass - it was not just a technological achievement but a humanitarian one as well. That vision continues to ripple today. I have friends I speak with in Russia routinely.?ÿ

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On top of selling his equipment, I use it everyday too. Almost every button is a story to me. Each button represents a conversation, sometimes a debate (on rare occasion a heated debate), and each button represents people - a person in need of some feature or application and another who responded to that need and wrote some lines of code to meet it. Almost every application has a face, and that face has a name, and a family, and hobbies. It's been quite an experience. Javad and I spent time at his home, in his backyard in San Jose, on a cool fall day and he explained how a choke-ring antenna works, he was ever the professor. ("How did I get here?" I kept thinking).?ÿ

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Javad taught me a lot, and not only about GPS theory, but about being bold and taking risks. He was a great mentor to me and I have so many great stories. I'm humbled, so very humbled, that he saw something in me worth listening to, a dirt surveyor with three semesters of junior college. But I can say that Javad loved surveyors. I don't know why he loved surveyors but he did. He chose to make his career about bringing innovation to our profession and I can honestly say that profit was never his chief priority. It was, in his words, about having fun and making great products. He never took a vacation, because to him his work with his team was always a vacation.

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