Research News, Awards, and Honors

November 2024

This year’s 19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellow Awardees have been announced. The recipients include Rita Sousa (Associate Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering) and Yi Yin (Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, NYU) for their project Climate Under Construction: Tracing the Heat in Abu Dhabi’s Expanding Landscape, 2000–2023; Sujeong Shim (Assistant Professor of Political Science) and B. Peter Rosendorff (Professor of Politics, NYU) for Politics of Sovereign Debt: Hegemonic Influence and Creditor Complexity; Andrew Eisenberg (Program Head, Music; Associate Professor of Music; Global Network Associate Professor of Music) and Elizabeth Hoffman (Professor of Music, NYU) for Sonic Intimacies of the Western Indian Ocean; and William Zimmerle (Senior Lecturer, Arts, and Humanities; Affiliated Faculty Member of the Arab Crossroads Studies Program and History Program) and Rakesh Behera (Industry Associate Professor, NYU Tandon School of Engineering) for Creating a Digital Heritage Exhibition and Virtual Learning Center for the 3D Study of Arabian Rock Art, Inscriptions, and Cultural Semiotics in the UAE. 

The program funds original interdisciplinary collaborations between NYU faculty in Abu Dhabi and New York, fostering joint research and artistic contributions that enhance scholarly activity at 19 WSN, NYUAD’s hub in New York, and promote faculty synergies across NYU’s global network.

ASTROBEAT – Music from Space competition, a collaboration between NYUAD and the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST), has launched its musical compositions by NYUAD students into space on board the International Space Station (ISS). Selected by NASA and the ISS National Lab as one of the significant experiments onboard the ISS, ASTROBEAT highlights the potential for interdisciplinary innovation in space. The winning artists, Summer Reid, an NYU Steinhardt student, and Nadine Kabbani, an NYUAD alumna, created original compositions that were streamed from space.

Astrobeat at the International Space Station; Andrea Macciò and Leonardo Barilaro 

The project is led by Leonardo Barilaro (Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering, MCAST), in collaboration with Carlos Guedes (Associate Professor of Music) and Matteo Marciano (Associate Professor of Music Technology). The compositions were recorded at NYUAD by Gazelien Records, a student-run recording label (lab) based at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates under guidance of Marciano. The initiative received crucial support from NYUAD Andrea Macciò (Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Science (CASS)), who initiated the scientific collaboration with Barilaro and MCAST.

Thekra Al Zaabi (Research Specialist) at the Public Health Research Center was invited to moderate a lecture organized by Majlis Mohamed bin Zayed titled “Wellness in the Future: A Holistic Approach to Healthcare.” She featured Lucien Engelen, CEO of Transform Health. His Highness Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, attended this prestigious event.

John Burt (Associate Professor of Biology) and NYUAD’s Mubadala Arabian Centre for Climate and Environmental Sciences were featured in a piece for The National, “Hope we've dodged a bullet': Concern over major coral bleaching off UAE coast.” The article highlights the coral reef's critical role in supporting marine life and local economies. The John Burt Marine Lab and Rita Bento (Research Associate) also hosted a workshop on the Status and Trends of Arabian Gulf Coral Reefs, which provided an excellent opportunity to learn about standardizing coral monitoring efforts to enable a more comprehensive understanding of regional corals in the face of more frequent and intense marine heat waves.

Balaraju Battu (Post-Doctoral Associate), Hazem Ibrahim (Graduate Research Assistant), Fengyuan Liu (Graduate Research Assistant), Talal Rahwan (Associate Professor of Computer Science), and Yasir Zaki (Assistant Professor of Computer Science) were honored with the Best Parallel Talk Award at the International Conference for Computational Social Science (IC2S2-2024) held in Philadelphia, USA. Their award-winning presentation tackled a highly relevant topic: the challenges associated with using ChatGPT in student assignments. The study revealed distinct differences in attitudes toward ChatGPT between teachers and students, as well as a marked divergence in usage patterns between developing and developed countries. 

The Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (CGSB) said goodbye to its first artist-in-residence program participant, Sam Nester, and welcomed its second artist-in-residence, Henry Tan. Henry explores the boundaries between life and simulation by investigating emerging technologies like synthetic biology, mixed reality, brain stimulation, and artificial intelligence. He creates installations, performances, songs, and architecture for people to rest and reimagine their perceptions and memories through sleep and dreams. This program brings together scientists and artists to collaborate, communicate, interact, and learn to promote creative thinking that drives innovation.

The CGSB also welcomed Zuzana Lukáčová, its second Tamayyuz Research Fellow, who has joined the lab of Piergiorgio Percipalle (Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs; Program Head of Biology; Professor of Biology) for the AY 24/25. She will focus on investigating the role of Nuclear Myosin 1 in adipogenesis and obesity to identify novel molecular signatures of obesity and gain insights into this condition. The Tamayyuz Research Fellowship is a prestigious one-year research development fellowship designed to support outstanding NYUAD graduating seniors who aspire to do research within a CGSB-affiliated laboratory. 

Peter Van der Windt (Program Head of Political Science; Associate Professor of Political Science) and Leonid Peisakhin (Associate Professor of Political Science) have published their latest paper, “Who Hosts? The Correlates of Hosting the Internally Displaced,” in the American Political Science Review. This study investigates the motivations behind households hosting forcibly displaced individuals, focusing on empathy as a driving factor. Using data from 1,504 households in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, combined with field interviews and experimental methods, they find that empathetic households are more likely to host, while factors such as ethnicity, religiosity, and wealth show no significant impact. 

Writing Instructors Sweta Kumari and Aieshah Arif presented their ongoing research with the Writing Languages and Pedagogy Research Kitchen at the Teaching and Learning Conference hosted by Middlesex University Dubai. The workshop, attended by participants from various local universities, reflected on the complexities surrounding the use and abuse of AI tools in student writing and communication in pursuit of a “native” or academic English “standard.”

The project “Clean Air in Classrooms: Environmental Inputs and Human Capital Formation” by the team comprising of Samreen Malik (PI), Nitin Kumar Bharti, David Blakeslee, Torsten Figueiredo-Walter, and Talha Naeem has received USD 200,000 from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab’s Learning for All Initiative to assess the impact of improved indoor air quality on students' health, cognitive, and non-cognitive outcomes in Pakistan’s public schools. 

The Office of Research Translation and Entrepreneurship (RTE) has launched an all-new platform to facilitate and expedite the transformation of groundbreaking, fundamental research into solutions with real-world impact. A one-stop shop for faculty, researchers, and students eager to turn their transformative ideas into successful businesses and commercial products and drive economic growth locally, regionally, and globally, this platform connects our academic community with industries, investors, startups, and entrepreneurs to commercialize innovations. In collaboration with the NYUAD Library, RTE also delivered a high-impact workshop on Intellectual Property: From Creation to Translation. Over 100 NYUAD community members, including faculty, researchers, postdocs, staff, and students, attended the event, highlighting the community's strong commitment to advancing innovation and commercialization.

A research collaboration led by Farah Shamout (Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering), Yiqiu Shen (Postdoctoral Associate), and Jamie Oliver (Associate Professor; Director of Graduate Studies, NYU) has devised an AI solution for the identification of breast cancer in ultrasound images. The model offers “radiologist-level accuracy” and has been designed as a clinician decision-support tool. The findings highlight the potential of AI to improve the accuracy, consistency, and efficiency of breast ultrasound diagnosis. Although AI is not a replacement for the expertise of clinicians, its powerful, complementary role as a decision-support tool leads us to believe that it should and will be increasingly translated into clinical practice.

A team of researchers led by Ali Trabolsi (Professor of Chemistry) has developed nanoparticles called covalent organic frameworks (nCOFs) modified with peptides to target triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), the most aggressive form of breast cancer. This innovative study, published in Applied Materials & Interfaces, shows promise in improving patient outcomes and personalizing cancer therapy, addressing the significant challenges faced by TNBC patients in the UAE, where breast cancer rates are notably high.

A collaboration between William Zimmerle (Senior Lecturer, Arts and Humanities) and the Core Technology Platforms (CTP) team has significantly contributed to an archaeological site report, Chapter Nine in Petra's Temple of the Winged Lions, Volume 2. In this project, three of our CTP Research Instrumentation Scientists — Liaqat Ali, Matt O’Connor, and M. Shiraz Ali — provided crucial support using LC-MS-MS techniques. This collaboration highlights the versatility and impact of CTP’s expertise across multiple fields, demonstrating how our resources contribute to diverse academic outputs.