19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellows

Since its inception in the spring of 2020, the 19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellows program has funded a series of original collaborations between NYU faculty in Abu Dhabi and New York. Fellows have been selected from science, engineering, social science and the humanities, and have often joined forces with colleagues in disciplines other than their own.

Their joint research and/or artistic accomplishments contribute to scholarly activity at 19 Washington Square North, the home of NYUAD in New York, as well as to faculty synergies across NYU's global network and to their fields' knowledge and creative production.

2024-2025 Faculty Fellowship Awards

  • Climate Under Construction: Tracing the Heat in Abu Dhabi's Expanding Landscape, 2000-2024

    Rita Leal Sousa
    Yi Yin

    In the rapidly expanding arid city of Abu Dhabi, urban growth isn't just reshaping the skyline — it is also altering the city's climate. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, which causes urban areas to be hotter than their rural surroundings, is a pressing challenge, especially in harsh desert environments with limited water resources. Here, introducing green spaces and other urban elements presents a paradox. While these spaces can cool the city during the day, they might actually increase temperatures at night, adding another layer of complexity to an already intricate issue.

    "Climate Under Construction” seeks to unravel these complexities and transform our understanding of urban climate dynamics. Using advanced remote sensing and machine learning techniques, we will map how different urban developments — from sprawling solar farms to ambitious re-vegetation efforts — are influencing the UHI effect and the city’s microclimates over time.

    This study will also explore the less obvious but equally critical factors, such as Abu Dhabi's unique geological and environmental features, that shape the city’s thermal landscape. By diving deep into the interplay between urban structures, land use, and the natural environment, our research aims to uncover innovative strategies to cool cities, reduce energy demands, and promote sustainable growth.

    Fellows

    • Rita Leal Sousa, Associate Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering, NYUAD
    • Yi Ying, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, NYU

2023-2024 Faculty Fellowship Awards

  • Organic Electronics

    Panče Naumov
    Stephanie Lee

    Organic electronics — devices that replace heavy and brittle silicon with carbon-based molecules — are enabling a future in which televisions can be rolled up like posters, smart sensors can be placed on bridges for real-time structural health monitoring, and paper-thin solar panels can be affixed to rooftops with simple adhesive. These devices are characterized by their inexpensive manufacturability, adaptability, and compatibility with flexible plastic supports, features that promise applications not possible or prohibitively expensive using traditional silicon-based technologies.

    Now imagine if these devices also could move and evolve on their own. Mobile and smart structural integrity sensors could scan surfaces for cracks or even heal themselves if damaged. Plantlike solar panels could spontaneously track the sun as it travels across the sky. These are just two examples out of endless possibilities that will be enabled by combining organic electronics with dynamic molecular crystals — materials that can bend, twist, crawl, jump and stretch. Together, Lee and Naumov aim to animate conductive molecular crystals, imparting mechanical motion to crystals that conduct charge, convert sunlight into electricity, and emit light.

    Fellows

    • Panče Naumov, Professor of Chemistry, NYUAD; Global Network Professor of Chemistry, NYU
    • Stephanie Lee, Associate Professor of Chemistry, NYU

2022-2023 Faculty Fellowship Awards

  • Understanding Gender Gaps in STEM: A Global Perspective

    Andrea Vial
    Andrei Cimpian

    Globally, women remain underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Social psychological research has uncovered a number of factors that contribute to these disparities, either by discouraging women’s participation or by creating barriers (e.g., bias) that block their opportunities for advancement. 

    One important limitation of this research is a narrow focus on Western countries and samples, which hinders both the theoretical understanding of the reasons behind gender disparities in STEM fields as well as the practical efforts to address those disparities. Notably, women are much better represented in STEM in Arab countries compared to other parts of the world, even when the region is otherwise characterized by gender inequality and conservative attitudes toward women’s roles. Western-focused social psychological theories would predict that women should be especially underrepresented in STEM in a cultural context such as the Arabian Gulf — and yet, the statistics defy such expectations.

    The current proposal aims to study this seeming paradox. Our three aims are (a) to conduct a systematic literature review of research on gender stereotyping and bias in Arab countries with the goal of illuminating similarities and differences with non-Arab countries, revising existing theory, and making recommendations for future research; (b) to develop an empirical research project that would supply pilot data for a larger research grant application to federal agencies such as the NSF; and (c) to convene an international symposium at 19 WSN focused on understanding gender gaps in STEM from a global perspective.

    Fellows


2021-2022 Faculty Fellowship Awards

  • Proactive Work Behaviors in Health Care: Fostering a Managerial Perspective and Directions for Future Research

    Jemima Frimpong
    Alden Lai

    Proactive behavior is defined as behavior that is self-starting, future-focused, and change-oriented. It also long entered mainstream discourse as a positive trait that is valued at work. However, emerging research suggests that proactivity is not always viewed favorably, which generates a need to better understand and identify organizational conditions that are the most suitable for proactive behaviors (vs. those that will not). 

    Because managers often act as observers and assessors of proactive behaviors among those they supervise, we propose to study proactive work behavior by focusing on the perspectives of managers. 

    Situating our project in the health care industry, we aim (1) to conduct a pilot study that examines how health care managers define, observe, and assess proactive behaviors among employees; and (2) to convene a panel of scholars and practitioners to identify future research directions for integrating proactivity theory into health care management research, as well as strategies for implementing evidence-based findings from this stream of research into practice. By building on the latest research from psychology and management science, we expect our project to foster a managerial perspective on proactivity at work, and to identify a set of research directions that scholars can consider to ultimately improve the job satisfaction and wellbeing of health care workers.

    Fellows


2020-2021 Faculty Fellowship Awards

  • Believing What We Want to Believe

    Sarah Paul
    Daniel Fogal

    The objective of our project is to better understand the nature of good reasoning about what to believe. To what extent should this kind of reasoning be influenced by our practical goals and values? This topic is significant in its own right, but also has important applications to a variety of real-world contexts. We focus on medical and political situations in which it is common for people’s beliefs to be shaped by factors other than truth and attempt to offer an account of what distinguishes good reasoning from bad in such cases.

    Fellows


2020 Faculty Fellowship Awards

May Al-Dabbagh and Natasha Iskander

May Al-Dabbagh
Natasha Iskander

Migrant Arrival on the Margins: Mobility, Promise, and the Politics of Difference in Sites of Exclusion

Research on migration flows to marginal socio-economic areas, broadly construed, is underdeveloped in the migration literature. To understand how these grassroots social and political processes unfold, this project develops a collaborative research exchange and a motivating theoretical framework to understand arrival at the margins. Operationally, this research exchange is supported by three components: a workshop, a colloquium, and the definition of a theoretical framework and special issue in a top migration journal — the workshop, entitled “Arrival on the margins: Mobility, promise, and the politics of difference in sites of exclusion,” held at NYU Accra, the colloquium, held at 19 Washington Square North, NYUAD’s home on the Square. The special issue includes the papers presented at the workshop and refined through the discussions that take place there.

Fellows

John Burt and Mary Killilea

John Burt
Mary Killilea

Monitoring Changing Mangrove Cover in Abu Dhabi, UAE

Mangroves are an important ecological and cultural resource in Abu Dhabi. These ecosystems have undergone periods of expansion and contraction throughout their history in Abu Dhabi. 

Our research works to quantify the amount of change experienced in these ecosystems at various time periods. Quantification of these changing coastal ecosystems is the first step to further understanding the ecological and social drivers that underpin mangrove conservation and management.

Fellows

Felix Hardmood Beck and Peder Anker

Felix Hardmood Beck
Peder Anker

Designing with Heat Waves

This project investigates how the architecture and design community in the Middle East has responded to the climate challenge, including design projects in the United Arab Emirates. It results in an exhibition featuring architectural drawings, design, and art to frame and advance this vitally important conversation, with contrasting examples of design to show efforts to find solutions for our current state of planetary peril.

Fellows

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