Taha Rassam Culhane

Director/Advisor
American/Iraqi-Irish
M.A. Urban Planning/Regional and International Development
Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Analysis and Policy, UCLA

An honors graduate from Harvard, Taha did his primary field-work in the primary rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra studying Orangutans and Seed Dispersal. He then spent 8 years teaching science to inner-city "at-risk youth" in the ghettoes of Los Angeles, developing award winning science curricula for NASA's Challenger Centre.

At Hollywood High School Taha helped build a "movie studio" for training youth in the production of science documentary videos.

Now a Ph.D. student at UCLA in Environmental Analysis and Policy, Taha has committed himself to equitable and sustainable development in his ancestral homeland here in the Arab World.

He runs the "Melodic-Mnemonics: Science Education through Music and Multimedia" lab at WESC, teaching Egyptian kids how to bring science textbooks to life through the magic of "Hollywood."