Crunch Time

Illah R. Nourbakhsh is Kavcic-Moura Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, inaugural Executive Director of the Center for Shared Prosperity, and co-director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab. He was the Inaugural K&L Gates Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. In 2009 the National Academy of Sciences named him a Kavli Fellow. In 2013 he was inducted into the June Harless West Virginia Hall of Fame. He was previously Robotics Group Lead for NASA/Ames during the MER landings, and is a retired civil servant, NASA GS15/10. In 2019 he was named a Hastings Fellow. He has co-authored textbooks and popular literature, including Turn Left, AI and Humanity, Robot Futures, and Parenting for Technology Futures. He has authored articles for The New Yorker and Foreign Affairs, in addition to academic journals and book chapters. He is a trustee of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, Winchester Thurston School and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project. He is a Director at Open Planet, a London-based Community Interest Corporation, and also President and a director at Friends of Open Planet, a 501(c)3 based in the United States.

Michael Druckman is the Executive Chairman and architect of Schools That Can, a national not-for-profit network of urban K to12 schools since 2006 that prepares historically marginalized youth for post-secondary success. He currently is a Fellow of the Leadership and Society Initiative at the University of Chicago. Michael established the “Senator Robert F. Kennedy Education Awards” in partnership with Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights in 2014 to recognize K to 12 school leaders, teachers and students for moral courage and the “Schools That Can Leaders That Can Awards” in 2017 to recognize leaders giving back to our society’s well-being in service of our youth. Both recognitions remain active. Michael chaired the Trey Whitfield School board in East New York, Brooklyn for many years, served on the Portal Learning board in Los Angeles, acted as an advisor to many K-12 schools over the last twenty years and was recognized as Founding Chairman Emeritus of the NYU Center for Global Affairs where he served as Co-Chairman for fourteen years.