Robert Zeidman

Robert Zeidman (born January 18, 1960) is an American electrical engineer and inventor. He rose to national attention in the USA after a private arbitration panel in April, 2023 ruled that Zeidman had proved material provided by Mike Lindell was not data from the 2020 United States presidential election. As such it could not be evidence of Chinese electoral interference.

In his professional career, Zeidman has made contributions in Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) design, embedded systems development, software synthesis, software analysis and software forensics. Best known for his pioneering contributions to the field of software forensics, Zeidman's research and development of software-forensics tools was instrumental in making detection of software source-code correlation practical and accurate, and in turning previously subjective information into empirical evidence.

Zeidman is a senior member of the IEEE and was the recipient of the 1994 Wyle/EE Times American by Design Award, the 2003 Jolt Reader's Choice Award, the 2010 and the 2015 Outstanding Engineer Award from the IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section

Early life and education Zeidman was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics from Cornell University in 1981 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1982. Zeidman is married to Carrie. They left California for Summerlin, Nevada in 2019. The Zeidmans are Jewish.

Technology career In October 1987, Zeidman founded the company Zeidman Consulting, which provides hardware and software design services, engineering support and expert witnesses for high-tech litigation. The company still operates with Zeidman as president. Zeidman's work there includes creating patented Molasses virtualization software that enables a slow speed hardware emulator or prototype to be attached to a high-speed network in order to emulate network hardware in a live system. Zeidman also consulted on court cases in disputed intellectual property, including Brocade v. A10 Networks, for which he testified at trial, ConnectU v. Facebook (on which the movie, The Social Network, is based), and Texas Instruments v. Samsung Electronics, which resulted in an award to his client of over $1 billion. Zeidman also developed the software tools, SynthOS and CodeSuite.

In January 1992, Zeidman invented remote backup and founded the company eVault Remote Backup Service. The company closed in April 1999 and the intellectual property became part of EVault, which was sold to Seagate Technology in 2007.

In January 1999, Zeidman founded The Chalkboard Network, which he ran as president until December, 2002. The company featured business and engineering courses.

In September 2007, Zeidman founded Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering Corporation, which provides software tools for intellectual property litigation. The company's main product is CodeSuite. The company operates with Zeidman as president.

In January 2011, Zeidman founded SamAnna Designs, which makes practical accessories. Its first product is the SamAnna Luxury Wallet.

In June 2012, Zeidman founded Swiss Creek Publications, an independent publisher, which published Zeidman's books: Introduction to Verilog, Just Enough Electronics to Impress Your Friends and Colleagues, The Amazing Adventure of Edward and Dr. Sprechtmachen, Horror Flick, and Good Intentions.

In December 2013, Zeidman founded Firtiva, a video-on-demand website to provide commercial-free content while sending second screen advertisements to a highly targeted audience.

Lindell challenge For three days ending August 12, 2021, election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell hosted a "Cyber Symposium" with the "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge" where he defied attendees to prove that his dataset was not authentic 2020 election data. Zeidman submitted his findings in a 15-page report to the officials running the challenge. Six weeks after the challenge ended he sent a claim to Lindell Management (the only expert to do so) and was promptly denied. A month later he filed for arbitration. Zeidman agreed to withdraw his other claims that Lindell's rules were unconscionable and that he had violated the Minnesota Consumer Fraud Act on condition of payment.

Zeidman is a conservative Republican and a Donald Trump supporter who voted for him twice. At the time of the arbitration panel's ruling Lindell was being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems (for $1.3 billion) and separately by one of their former executives. Lindell Management filed an appeal in the 8th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals on March 22, 2024. As of August, 2024, the case is still pending.

Zeidman told reporters he had plans to donate the money to non-profits committed to election security and intended to write a book about the experience.

Awards 1994 Wyle/EE Times American by Design Award 2003 Jolt Reader's Choice Award 2010 Outstanding Engineer Award from the IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section 2015 Outstanding Engineer Award from the IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section and from the Region 6 Central Area for his pioneering contributions to the field of software forensics.

Books