Turn Left: Spinning an Intercultural Identity with Illah R. Nourbakhsh

Join us in Ann Arbor for a conversation with Professor Illah R. Nourbakhsh about his book, Turn Left: Spinning an Intercultural Identity. This event is perfect for readers looking to explore and discuss complex topics like immigration, identity, and technological innovation.

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About the Book:

Turn Left centers on the perennial immigrant question: where do I belong? Through personal anecdote and shrewd cultural commentary, Iranian-American professor and innovator Illah Nourbakhsh illustrates how the immigrant experience defies categorization, no matter how hard we try to put it in a box. In this wide-ranging memoir, Nourbakhsh traces the evolution of his sense of belonging through the Iranian Revolution, the Gulf Wars, 9/11, the AI revolutions, the dot-com boom, NASA and two American universities. Along the way the reader will join a race across the U.S. in an electric car, visit dozens of countries with National Geographic, and arrive at a model for community engagement and social robotics, all through the complex lens of the immigrant experience.

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About the Author:

Illah R. Nourbakhsh is Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he has taught for twenty-eight years. He is vice president of the school board for Winchester Thurston School and on the board of directors of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project. He is also a trustee of the Benedum Foundation, which provides funding for local health, education, and small business development. Currently, Nourbakhsh is honored as a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, a Hastings Fellow, and an inductee of the June Harless West Virginia Hall of Fame. Whether with NASA, the Jet Propulsion labs, or otherwise, Illah's research centers on ethics and technology, engaging with communities around the world to co-invent technologies that provide power and agency to marginalized populations that have a right to shape their own destiny. He has also authored Robot Futures, AI and Humanity, and Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots.