About

The byline version (50 words):
Kagan Tumer is a science fiction author, SFWA member, and robotics/AI professor. He attended seven schools in four countries and worked as a food server, soccer referee, and logging engineer before spending nine years at NASA. When not writing, he studies AI ethics, teaches robotics, consults for TV/movie AI projects, and mentors future scientists.

The short version (100 words):

Kagan Tumer is a science fiction author and professor of Robotics and AI. He attended seven schools in five cities in four countries, all before reaching high school, and is steadily moving west, from Virginia to Texas to California to Oregon. Along the way, Kagan worked as a food server, registrar’s office clerk, print shop copier, soccer referee, math tutor, and well logging engineer. He is a member of SFWA, has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, and spent nine years at NASA working on multi-robot coordination.  When not writing, he ponders AI ethics, teaches robotics, consults for TV/movie AI projects, and mentors future scientists.

The TL;DR version (200 words):

Kagan Tumer is a science fiction author, SFWA member, and professor of Robotics and AI. He attended seven schools and lived in five cities in four countries, all before reaching high school. The constant upheaval taught him two things: observe the world and the people in it because you need to understand them, and don’t get too attached to any place or anyone because neither will be there next year.

Turns out, that’s pretty good training for a writer.

Along the way, Kagan worked as a cafeteria food server, registrar’s office clerk, print shop copier, soccer referee, math tutor, and well logging engineer. He also worked for NASA, designing autonomous robot coordination algorithms for future missions. When it finally dawned on him that NASA wasn’t going to build and send hundreds of robots to Mars so he can play with them, he decided to create his own reality in Science Fiction.

After a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in the Pacific Northwest. His debut novel, Purged Souls, was a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year finalist. When not writing, he studies AI ethics, teaches robotics, and mentors future scientists.

 

Also, this site is about Kagan Tumer, the science fiction author. If you were looking for the Professor of AI and robotics, click here.