Illah R. Nourbakhsh is an agent of the Hillman Photography Initiative. He is professor of robotics, director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) lab, and head of the MS Robotics Technology Program at Carnegie Mellon University. His current research projects explore community-based robotics, including educational and social robotics and ways to use robotic technology to empower individuals and communities.

He is co-principal investigator of the Global Connection Project, a joint initiative of Carnegie Mellon, NASA, the National Geographic Society, and Google Inc. that developed the gigapixel imaging technology known as GigaPan. He is leading projects to apply GigaPan technology to scientific and educational efforts and to use GigaPan to help students communicate with peers internationally. He is the author of Robot Futures (2013) and co-author of Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots (2011). Nourbakhsh earned his BS, MS, and PhD in computer science at Stanford University and has been a faculty member of Carnegie Mellon since 1997.