Idan Kestenbom
Open to opportunities

Hey, I'm Idan. My favorite projects are the ambitious ones.

Robotics, Reinforcement Learning, and Autonomous Systems.

See the work → Get in touch →
VASARA robot CAD render

VASARA robot · 2026

01 — Selected work
01VASARA CAD render
VASARA2026

Autonomous vascular suturing robot. PPO in Isaac Sim, deployed to 0.24 mm on real hardware.

McCusker Award
02ForeHumanity research poster
ForeHumanity2025

Crisis forecaster on 2M news articles across 24 years, with a LoRA-tuned Mistral explaining each call.

Betterment of Humanity
03Agarwal campaign sites
Agarwal for Congress2026

Three live sites and a pipeline that OCR'd 3,923 disclosed trades from the House Clerk.

Live
04
The FoodXChange2023

A donation marketplace for surplus food. Founding engineer, 25+ screens on one TS codebase.

Shipping
05PhysioRise CreateML Action Classifier training pipeline
PhysioRise2024

iOS app with on-device pose classification, judging a squat live at 99.2% confidence.

1st Place, Synopsys
06
9:41
Mood check
How are you,
right now?
😊Happy
😌Calm
😐Bored
😟Nervous
😢Sad
😡Angry
😱Shocked
😴Sleepy
😶Numb
Log mood
9:41
Hi there!
How can I help you today?
💬AI TherapyChat with a therapist who reflects you
😊Mood Check-InLog how you're feeling, no streaks
🌬Breathing3 minutes, guided
⌂ HomeJournalStats
9:41
Breathe
Box breathing
Breathe in
4 in · 4 hold · 4 out  ·  00:24
HappyBara2025

A teen wellness app with 5 identity-matched AI personas and a private CloudKit journal.

iOS
07FTC TeamTaro robot
FTC TeamTaro2025

Team and software lead. Mecanum drive, ML-assisted autonomous, $1,500 raised for the season.

Competition
08
log2 FC 300 DE GENES GENES TP53 EGFR MYC VEGFA BRCA1 CONTROL n=4 DISEASE n=4
GIDAS2024

Gene-expression analysis across two diseases, ending in a co-authored research abstract.

Bioinformatics
02 — Experience
ZealIntern · San Francisco, CAJun 2026 — Present

Built internal tooling for a former YC startup.

SpaceComputerGrowth · RemoteMay 2026 — Present

Produced explainer videos end to end (script, render, QA) for the Orbital KMS and Orbitport space-infrastructure products, using Claude Code and Higgsfield MCP.

Agarwal for CongressDeveloper / Intern · Santa Clara, CAMar 2026 — Present

Shipped three campaign sites and the affordability index's data pipeline: scrapers and scheduled CRON jobs feeding Supabase, tracking 16 grocery chains and 500+ gas stations, refreshed daily. TypeScript, Next.js, Supabase, Vercel.

FIRST Tech Challenge #13218Team Lead & Software Lead · Santa Clara, CAJul 2024 — Present

Led three subteams and raised $4,200+ running STEM programs for hundreds of students. As software lead, built a custom OpenCV vision pipeline for real-time detection and tracking that drove the robot's autonomous scoring.

SCV Science & Engineering FairIndependent Research · Santa Clara, CASep 2023 — Present

Independent research: VASARA (autonomous microsurgical robot for sub-millimeter anastomosis), a LoRA-tuned crisis forecaster, and PhysioRise (a CoreML iOS app for real-time form feedback).

03 — About

Aspiring AI Research Scientist focused on robotics, reinforcement learning, and autonomous systems. Built end-to-end ML and robotic platforms including an autonomous surgical system (VASARA) and large-scale news analysis models. Experienced in iOS development (10+ apps, 2 published) and contributing to a nonprofit tackling food waste through a surplus marketplace.

04 — Awards