Padma Shri Professor Emeritus Robert Thurman is an acclaimed translator of Sanskrit and Tibetan scientific and philosophical texts and an acknowledged expert in Indian sciences and religions, as well as world philosophies and history. Retired after 60 years of advanced research and teaching, he is also an author of best-selling works on self-development as well as numerous academic treatises. In the Columbia University public intellectual tradition, he is also an activist in human rights promotion and inter-civilizational understanding and reconciliation. He also seeks to transform education by adding to the development of critical intellect the systematic cultivation of emotional intelligence and compassionate ethical sensibility.