Here I share some of my personal interests, and I will try to update this page from time to time.

In addition to my enthusiasm for an academic career in engineering and science, I have many personal interests in different aspects of life.  For instance, sports (soccer, water skiing, alpine skiing), music (jazz, blues, reggae, classical), and visual art are some of them.  However, my main non-science passion goes to social justice and human rights on our little planet.   This has led me to partake in outreach programs such as team-up for youth, NSF’s GK-12 program, and BU’s outreach classes, all of which involve middle school or high school students from low-income families. I also closely follow and actively support the Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Me Too movements.  I believe we live in a historic time, and it is very fascinating to watch all these movements form, progress, and unfold before our very own eyes.  To me, it is enthralling to watch how WE are changing the world.

Below I share some links and and videos that I find very interesting.

Nov. 15, 2019
Enjoy this interesting talk by Richard Murray from CalTech on the importance of formal methods in control and design of safety-critical systems.

Mar. 19, 2016
Human-robot interaction is emering as a very sensative and important field in our era. Enjoy this fantastic presentation by Guy Hoffman on "Robots with Soul."

Jan. 24, 2016
Enjoy this eye-opening and interesting talk by Moshe Vardi (my postdoc adviser) on the emergence of robots and how they are taking away jobs from humans. The talk is entitled, "Humans, machines, and the future of work," and it was given at Univeristy of Oxford.

Jan. 10, 2016
This post is about visual art and a group of engineers whose goal is to bring imaginations to life or as they say, "engineering imagination." These people (my very own brother included) appreciate art so much so that, as a serious hobby, they join artists to create large art installations that not only are visually mesmerizing but also are structurally sound and safe. Their group is call RBHU and you can check out their projects here.

Below, you find a video of Peter Hudson's project that they participated in. It is called Eternal Return (oh and they do return eternally!).

Oct. 21, 2014
Below, is another TED talk on robotics. In this video, Professor Raffaello D'Andrea from ETH Zurich demonstrates the power of control theory and model-based control algorithms in robotics.

Sep., 2013
Enjoy this TED talk by Professor Vijay Kumar (my academic grandfather) on flying quadrotors and a decentralized approch to control of teams of these robots.

Jan., 2012
This post is about leadership and starting a movement.  This video, although at first, might seem irrelevant, it has a valuable lesson on leadership and starting a movement.

Dec., 2011
The first post is about the life of an Iranian-American (yours truly) in Boston. It is a production of BU Today. You can find the article here and the video below.