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Topher White is an American Physicist, web developer turned anti-deforestation activist and the founder of the non-profit, RF.

Career
White started learning basic computing from his father, a computational physicist, at an early age. At Kenyon College, in Ohio, he reestablished the college radio station after bringing it back to workable state.

He graduated with a B.A. in physics in 2004 and joined as a web chief at ITER, which is constructing a nuclear fusion reactor in southern France.

In August 2011, he worked on a prototype of the rain-forest protection system at home. He left ITER and moved to California to joining as the head of technical operations at Enthuse. Upon lack of motivation to keep up with his job at this new startup, he returned to his work on the forest protection prototype which turned out to be more difficult to engineer than White had imagined. He ended up figuring out a way to use Android phones, powered them using solar panels that harvested sunflecks, and installed sound detection systems that reported illegal deforestation. This project turned into a series of pilot projects and eventually the anti-deforestation non-profit RF.

The efforts by white and his organization, RF, to detect illegal logging and deforestation have received coverage in numerous tech reviews and news sources including Huffington Post, Forbes and Tech Insider.