Founders

Digital Assembly was founded by Nasir Memon, Pasha Pal, and Kulesh Shanmugasundaram. The encouragement of luminaries in digital forensics and the lack of mature file carving technology in a market with increasing need, led the founders to start Digital Assembly in 2006 with the mission to “recover more with less effort.” The company has successfully competed and won NSF Phase I and Phase II SBIRs as well as an NYSTAR TTIP grant. The founders were the first to approach the file carving problem, especially carving of fragmented files, with scientific rigor and to propose solutions that are independent of file systems or storage media.

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Nasir Memon

Nasir Memon is responsible for setting the company's strategic vision and leading the company. Nasir is a recognized expert in multimedia forensics and security. He is also a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Information Systems and Internet Security (ISIS) laboratory at NYU-Poly. He has published over 200 articles in journals and conference proceedings and holds four patents in image compression and security with six more pending application. He has won several awards including the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award and the Jacobs Excellence in Education Award from NYU-Poly. He has appeared on NBC Nightly News as an expert on steganography and his research has been featured in The New York Times, MIT Review, Wired.com, and NewScientist. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering and a Master of Science in Mathematics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) in Pilani, India in 1981. He received a Master of Science in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska in 1989 and 1992, respectively.

Pasha Pal

Pasha Pal is responsible for the company's product development initiatives. Prior to founding Digital Assembly he was a graduate student at NYU:Poly and made significant contributions to carving fragmented images. His research contributions form the heart of SmartCarver™ used in Digital Assembly's products. Prior to joining NYU:Poly for his graduate studies Pasha worked at Panasonic Research and Development. He received a Master of Science in Computer Science from NYU:Poly and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (Summa Cum Laude) from the New York Institute of Technology.

Kulesh Shanmugasundaram

Kulesh Shanmugasundaram is responsible for product design and software architecture at Digital Assembly. Prior to founding Digital Assembly, Kulesh was a post-doctoral research fellow at ISIS Laboratory in NYU:Poly. His research interests are in the areas of network security and digital forensics. In 2002, he wrote the pioneering research paper proposing a solution to carve fragmented files. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from NYU:Poly in 2006. He received the Pearl Brownstein Doctoral Research Award for Best Ph.D. Thesis and won the second prize in the prestigious ACM Annual Student Research Competition.

Management Team

— Pasha Pal, Chief Executive Officer
— Nasir Memon, Chief Technology Officer
— Yuhong Yu, Chief Operating Officer

Our Advisers

Mark Pollitt

Mark Pollitt served over thirty years in the U. S. government, over ten years as a military officer in the Marine Corps and Coast Guard, then another twenty as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition to conducting criminal and national security investigations for over 13 years, he supervised online investigations, was the Chief of the FBI's computer forensic unit (CART) and was the Director of the Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory Program (RCFL). He has served in leadership roles in a number of national and international organizations involving digital forensics, including the Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence, the International Organization on Computer Evidence, the International Federation on Information Processing Working Group on Digital Evidence and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Mark is a graduate of Cornell University, Syracuse University, the Information Resources Management College - National Defense University and has also completed post-graduate work in forensic science at George Washington University.

Bruce Niswander

Bruce Niswander is an entrepreneur and consultant with 20+ years of experience driving profitable growth in challenging and competitive business markets. Bruce currently serves as the Director of the Office of Innovation Development, Technology Transfer at NYU:Poly in Brooklyn, NY and is also the Director of the Brooklyn Enterprise on Science & Technology Business Incubator. Bruce founded Synergetic Solutions to provide court certified expertise on business valuations, damage valuations, computer forensics and intellectual property right infringements. He has provided expert witness services in ~35 separate court cases involving $200M+ in damage claims. Bruce also founded and directed a joint venture between Objective Financial Solutions and Bank One to create an expert computer application capable of generating personal financial strategies and investment portfolios. At Battelle Memorial Institute he was responsible for securing and coordinating the largest private technical development contract involving a campus based transaction network.