19 Washington Square North Faculty Fellows

Previous Faculty Fellows

• 2025-2026
  • Song/Sahin
  • Cornille/Huang
  • Thomas/Avalos
  • Pardlo/Ray

  Computational Analysis and Redesign of a Glaucoma Valve with a Micropillar-Microchip Approach

  

  

  Annually, glaucoma affects over 80 million people, half of whom are unaware due to the asymptomatic nature in early stages. Current treatment includes minimal invasive drainage implants. However, the side effect of early postoperative hypotony (low IOP) remains the main challenge associated with drainage implants. We design a micropillar screen for the valve with staggered and straight configurations and analyze them with a computational (CFD) approach as well as experiments. Further studies will include flow optimization, performance, reliability, and manufacturability of the designs. We will also perform benchtop testing and prepare for preclinical studies.

  Fellows

  • Yong-Ak (Rafael) Song, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering, NYUAD
  • Iskender Sahin, Industry Professor of Mechanical Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

  Towards Climate-resilient Apples: Harnessing Epigenomic Diversity for Sustainable Fruit Culture

  

  

  This collaborative project investigates how epigenetic variation can be harnessed to improve the climate resilience of apple trees, a crucial perennial crop facing increasing environmental pressures. Using cutting-edge sequencing, gene expression analyses, and computational biology, the team will investigate how stress-induced epigenomic changes influence the plasticity and adaptive potential of apple trees. The study focuses on genetically identical cultivars grown for five years across three contrasting climates, offering a rare opportunity to detect environment-driven epigenomic divergence. The collaboration brings together NYUAD’s strength in experimental genomics and apple biology with NYU’s expertise in gene regulatory network modeling. By integrating these approaches, the project will test whether stress-induced epigenetic changes are heritable, potentially opening new pathways for breeding climate-resilient fruit trees.

  Fellows

  • Amandine Cornille, Associate Professor of Biology, NYUAD
  • Carol Huang, Associate Professor of Biology, NYU

  Structural Characterization of Hemithioindigo Photoswitch Smart Materials Using NMR Crystallography and Light Magnetic Resonance

  

  

  Photoswitches are chromophores that undergo reversible changes in structure upon light irradiation, usually through isomerization. Integration of photoswitches into structured materials such as hydrogels or polymers enhance their functionality, as their optical and structural properties are changed via interactions with the matrix. Although photoswitches such as azobenzenes, diarylethylenes, and hemithioindigo have been widely studied in solution, molecular-level studies of photoswitches embedded in gels or polymers have been lacking. Optimization strategies of these ‘smart materials’ rely on the ability to characterise π-π stacking interactions, covalent and non-covalent interactions between photoswitch and matrix material. These interactions can be challenging to quantify, particularly if the matrix is non-crystalline, which limits the utility of X-ray methods.

  In this proposal, we aim to address a gap in knowledge regarding the molecular interactions between solid-state photoswitches and their local environment. Leveraging the combined expertise of NYU New York and NYU Abu Dhabi, we will use a combination of multi-dimensional solid-state NMR, EPR, and relaxation studies to measure changes in the structure and dynamics that occur at the interface before and after light irradiation. This study will significantly impact our understanding of the molecular interactions between photoswitches and at the photoswitch-matrix interface.

  Fellows

  • Brijith Thomas, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, NYUAD
  • Claudia Avalos, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, NYU

  Family Photography Collections

  

  

  Our 19 WSN Fellowship project takes as its inspiration the Akkasah photography archive at NYUAD. With images dating from the late nineteenth century to chromatic contemporary landscapes, Akkasah contains over thirty thousand photographs of life in the Middle East and North Africa. Our objective is to learn about these photographs and to respond through an artist book combining Pardlo’s poetry and Ray’s photography. In close collaboration with NYUAD archivists, we will attend especially to themes of family and collecting: for example, what does it mean to meditate on the protective yet near-total absence of women in the Al Qassim Family Collection? How might we “see” family in the context of such absence? Similarly, what do we make of the early twentieth-century photograph in the Yasser Alwan Collection’s Egyptian Family Series of two women kissing? How does this demonstration of affection spin visualizations of intimacy when viewed among the collection’s many stoic wedding portraits? As an international collaboration, this project invites comparative inquiries regarding family photography collections at other NYU sites; for example, the family scrapbook of a Panamanian student relaxing in the late 1930s with her NYU New York cohort in Washington Square Park.

  During our fellowship year, we will experiment with various combinations of text and image: extending important ideas in our previous work: for example, Pardlo has long been engaged in a practice of ekphrasis, which he views as a kind of translation. Ray, meanwhile, is a translator who is eager to explore how one might translate via the medium of photography: translating a poem into a photograph or a photograph into another photograph.

  Fellows

  • Gregory Pardlo, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, NYUAD
  • Montana Ray, Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, NYU

  Akkasah: Photography Archive — A Selection of Images

  Al Qassim Family Collection:

  • “Two men in Khatt, Ras Al Khaimah,” undated
  • “Boy posing behind tobacco plants in Al Salehia, Ras Al-Khaimah,” undated

  Yasser Alwan Collection, Egyptian Family Series: 

  • “Black and white photographic print of a family group on the beach in their bathing suits,” undated
  • “Black and white photographic print of a young woman with her hands around her neck,” undated
  • “Black and white photographic print of young woman kissing another woman,” undated

   

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• 2024-2025
  • Sousa/Yin
  • Shim/Rosendorff
  • Eisenberg/Hoffman
  • Zimmerle/Behera

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

  

  

  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

  Politics of Sovereign Debt: Hegemonic Influence and Creditor Complexity
  

  

  

  Many developing countries are at severe risk of debt crises, with over half of low-income countries and a quarter of emerging markets facing high debt distress. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank play a crucial role in addressing these crises by assessing a country’s default risk and facilitating creditor coordination. Crucial to this process is the Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) they provide, essentially a risk assessment based on a country’s macroeconomic conditions.

  This project investigates if and how geopolitical dynamics affect the sentiments and creditworthiness scores offered in the DSAs. To achieve this goal, we will: 1) create an original dataset drawn from the full set of published DSAs, 2) detect deviations between actual DSAs and those predicted based solely on economic conditions, and 3) theorize and test the role of major and rising powers (such as China), as well new creditors (such as Saudi Arabia and India), in shaping DSA outcomes. This project offers insights into international debt relief coordination, major power influence within international organizations, and on the challenges and opportunities for sovereign debt management following the rise of new creditor states.
  

   

  Fellows

  • Sujeong Shim, Assistant Professor of Political Science
    
  • B. Peter Rosendorff, Professor of Politics, NYU

  Sonic Intimacies of the Western Indian Ocean

  

  

  For centuries, the western Indian Ocean region has served as a nexus of trade and cultural exchange, bridging East Africa, the African Horn, West Asia (i.e. the “Middle East” and Arabian Gulf), South Asia, and, since the eighteenth century, Europe. Linguistically, the region is marked by intensive processes of creolization, resulting in language situations that are not only diverse but entwined, in which even local languages from disparate language families bear structural connections that speak to centuries of being fused and blended in everyday communication and artistic expression. Scholars of language and culture in the western Indian Ocean have long taken it as axiomatic that such language situations not only reflect but also impact subject formation and social relations in the region. In recent years, some of these scholars have argued that the most profound impacts reside at the level of affect and emotion, in subjective experiences and nonrepresentational practices that can only be effectively approached by attending to the materiality and embodied experience of language. Approaching this task from the direction of sound studies and sound art, this project engages in an ethnographic and artistic exploration of the vocalic soundworld of East Africa’s “Swahili coast.” We frame our ethnographic and artistic object of inquiry as “sonic intimacies,” by which we mean the nondiscursive linkages, associations, and affinities between local languages that are enacted in everyday communication and artistic expression, and which sometimes—or perhaps always, to varying extents—serve as vehicles for felt understandings of the linkages, associations, and affinities between different communities of speakers. 

  This project is an experiment in methodology that proceeds from the premise that art and research inform and enrich each other in humanistic inquiry. Working collaboratively with intellectuals and artists from the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, we will engage creatively with archival sound materials to create an artistic sound installation that enables listeners to encounter and reflect upon the experience of living in and with the polyphony of interrelated languages and ways of vocalizing that one encounters every day in Mombasa and other Swahili port cities. Adventurous though our methodological intervention may be, the project also stands as a somewhat organic response to recent works in Indian Ocean studies that have highlighted the role of the aesthetic, in the Aristotelian sense of sensuous engagement with and knowledge of the world, in how Indian-Ocean subjects incorporate histories of migration and diasporic connection into local understandings of place and social belonging. Anticipated contributions include a rich set of observations and reflections about the sonic-aesthetic world of the Swahili coast and the broader region of the western Indian Ocean, and an equally rich set of observations and reflections about the relationship between art and research in humanistic inquiry. Our intention is to establish a dialogue between art and research as two ways of knowing, leveraging the power of art-making to access ideas that may not yet be articulated or articulable, and the power of humanistic research to hone questions that open up new insights.
  

  Fellows

  • Andrew Eisenberg, Program Head, Music; Associate Professor of Music; Global Network Associate Professor of Music, NYUAD
  • Elizabeth Hoffman, Professor of Music, NYU
    

  Creating a Digital Heritage Exhibition and Virtual Learning Center for the 3D Study of Arabian Rock Art, Inscriptions, and Cultural Semiotics in the UAE

  

  

  High-resolution photography, photogrammetry, and digital scans provide the most cutting-edge heritage technology for cultural preservation. This also helps in documenting and preserving fieldwork data and potentially displaying some of it to both local and global audiences for promoting cultural awareness. The purpose of this year’s digital heritage project is to three dimensionally scan pre-Islamic rock art from the southeastern Arabian Peninsula. These artifacts have been deposited across old caravan routes in the form of paintings, pecked-incised engravings, and alphabetic inscriptions on cave shelter walls and on stones in the wadis of the desert landscapes. The project is a continuation of Zimmerle’s fieldwork and traveling exhibition, Cultural Treasures from the Cave Shelters of Dhofar: A Digital Humanities Initiative for Exhibiting the Rock Art & Inscriptions of Southern Oman as Heritage, previously under the auspices of The Diwan of the Royal Court in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center in Washington, DC, but also includes tracing and scanning old and new rock art discoveries from each emirate in the United Arab Emirates. Some of the findings of this work will be 3D printed as digital case studies to create a virtual exhibition of curated artifacts from the Arabian Peninsula. 

  Extensive periods of weathering and heritage vandalism at many sites require mitigating strategies to preserve and protect the best-preserved painted rock art of pre-Islamic Arabia. Both the website that we are developing, and our multidimensional printing and analytical photogrammetry techniques and tools — designed by Behera and Zimmerle — will provide ways to exhibit replicated forms of these artifacts to scale with potential future outputs to preserve petroglyphs in the field for both academic study and museum sensory experiences. Our eventual goal is to share a reliable digital version of the rock art corpora with the international museum community in the form of digital databases and physical scaled models geared toward global cultural preservation.
  

  Fellows

  • William Zimmerle, Senior Lecturer, Arts and Humanities; Affiliated Faculty Member of the Arab Crossroads Studies Program and History Program, NYUAD
  • Rakesh Behera, Industry Associate Professor, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
    

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• 2023-2024
  • Naumov and Lee
  • Pöpper and McCoy
  • Kaufman and Tucker

  Organic Electronics

  

  

  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

  Trustworthy and Secure AI-based Text Generation

  

  

  Misinformation, and its targeted counterpart disinformation, has become a major concern in the open online world where everyone can contribute information that can be publicly accessed. This has only been aggravated by the recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and Large Language Models (LLMs) that allow text and information to be created at scale without human effort and thus raise serious concerns about their harmful implications.

  This project develops methodologies that aim to evaluate the trustworthiness of automatically generated text from large-scale language models, such as the one used in ChatGPT. We will investigate and suggest methods for evaluating the stability and factual correctness of LLM-generated text and investigate these questions across multiple AI-based systems. Our goal is to better understand the harms that can be caused and develop techniques for their early detection. We will also design measures and develop tools for a more trustworthy use of generative AI-based text tools.
  

  Fellows

  • Christina Pöpper, Program Head of Computer Science; Assistant Professor of Computer Science, NYUAD; Global Network Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
  • Damon McCoy, Associate Professor, Tandon School of Engineering, NYU

  Arab Social Media and Politics Project

  

  

  In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, diverse political actors across the MENA region — from armed groups and clerics to activists and politicians — flocked to social media to organize, reach their constituencies, and amplify their causes. As these actors create content and interact with others, they leave behind digital traces of their strategic communication and the networks through which it spreads. Taking advantage of this rich record of online behavior, we plan to develop an infrastructure for tracking shifts in political alliances, including extremism, sectarianization, and polarization, in countries across the Middle East.

  This will allow us to monitor emerging threats to regional stability both in the immediate aftermath of events on the ground and over long-range time horizons. To reach this goal, we plan to carry out the following three research objectives: 1) creating a database of tens of thousands of political, economic, religious, and cultural elites’ online communication, eventually across 28 countries of the Middle East, with this first phase of the project focusing on four countries as a proof-of-concept; 2) developing scalable approaches to mapping and measuring shifting polarization, sectarianism, and extremism among these actors and their followers over time; and 3) training the next generation of analysts of Arab social media data to improve and continue scaling our approach to real-time threat monitoring in the MENA region.

  Fellows

  • Aaron Kaufman, Assistant Professor of Political Science, NYUAD
  • Josh Tucker, Professor of Politics, Director Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, Co-Director NYU Center for Social Media and Politics(CSMaP), Affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, Affiliated Professor of Data Science

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• 2022-2023
  • Andrea Vial and Andrei Cimpian
  • Mohamad Eid and Marci Levine

  Understanding Gender Gaps in STEM: A Global Perspective

  

  

  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

  Andrea Vial, Assistant Professor of Psychology; Global Network Assistant Professor of Psychology, NYUAD Science

  Andrea Vial’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing from social psychological, sociological, organizational, and developmental perspectives to investigate how gender stereotypes and beliefs about roles contribute to employment segregation and inequality on the basis of gender. She is particularly interested in studying why people flock to gender-stereotypic roles, the barriers that they encounter when they don’t, and the conditions under which they can thrive in counter-stereotypic domains and occupations. Vial earned her PhD in Psychology from Yale University in 2018. Her work has been published in high-impact journals, including Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Applied Psychology, and covered by media outlets such as Forbes and NPR.

  Andrei Cimpian, Professor of Psychology, NYU Arts and Science

  Andrei Cimpian earned a PhD in psychology from Stanford University in 2008 and is now Professor of Psychology at NYU. His research investigates motivation and academic achievement, with a particular focus on how educational outcomes are shaped by gender and racial/ethnic stereotypes. Cimpian’s research has been published in top journals such as Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Psychological Science, earning him the 2018 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology. Media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, NPR, and The Economist have covered his work.

  Haptic Feedback for Local Anesthesia Training

  

  

  This project seeks to develop and evaluate haptic (tactile) feedback in a virtual reality (VR) local anesthesia training simulation. In addition to immersive visual experience, the simulation provides the tactile sensation of inserting a real needle in a patient using a haptic interface designed specifically for this purpose. A 3D printed Carpule syringe will be designed and attached to a Geomagic haptic interface to provide a realistic grip experience in addition to providing force feedback during the anesthesia procedure. 

  Haptic data such as position, orientation, force, speed, etc., will be recorded to provide quantitative measures of the quality of performance. The ability of haptic feedback to improve learning outcomes will be evaluated using an experimental study with dental professors and students from NYU’s College of Dentistry. Moreover, the results from quantitative evaluation will be cross-validated using subjective feedback from dental professors and students.

  Fellows

  Mohamad Eid, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, NYUAD

  Mohamad Eid received a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 2010. He is currently an assistant professor of electrical engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He was previously a teaching and research associate at the University of Ottawa from June 2008 until April 2012. He is the co-author of the book: Haptics Technologies: Bringing Touch to Multimedia, Springers 2011, the technical chair of several haptic conferences. He is the recipient of several best paper awards in several international conferences such as ICBAE 2016, DS-RT 2008, and the prestigious ACM Multimedia 2009 Grand Challenge Most Entertaining Award. He has won several awards for academic and research distinction including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Award of Excellence, University of Ottawa Excellence scholarship, and Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) scholarship. He has more than 125 conference and journal publications and seven patents. He is a guest editor at the IEEE Transactions on Haptics journal. His academic interests include affective haptics, neurohaptics, and novel haptic interfaces.

  Marci Levine, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, NYU Dentistry

  Marci Levine, DMD, MD is a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and NYU-Dentistry's Predoctoral Director of Oral Surgery. Her primary research interest is in the development of educational strategies for teaching dental clinical skills. She is currently designing a virtual reality-based curriculum to improve instruction in local anesthesia. Levine is the Chair-Elect of the NYU-Dentistry's Academy of Distinguished Educators and she is a past recipient of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Foundation's Faculty Educator Development Award for outstanding early-career academic oral surgeons.

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• 2021-2022
  • Jemima Frimpong and Alden Lai
  • Pedro Monaville and Duncan Yoon

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

  

  

  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

  Jemima Frimpong, Associate Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, NYUAD Social Science

  Jemima Frimpong’s research focuses on the complex dynamics of decision making, and the intersection of information processing and discrimination. Frimpong has worked extensively in health care organizations, examining how managerial attributes, including decision making, affect the adoption and implementation of innovation, treatment practices, and ultimately the health of patients. She recently launched a program of research to investigate the impact of biases (encompassing stereotyping and prejudice) on managerial decision making and behaviors. Frimpong is particularly interested in studying how managers process information about job applicants and employees, and how these processes might lead to discrimination and other adverse outcomes. She is conducting a series of experiments designed to elicit the dynamics of biases in hiring and promotion decisions. Frimpong uses a broad array of methods throughout her work, ranging from survey and lab-based experiments to randomized trials.
  

  Alden Lai, Assistant Professor of Public Health Policy and Management, NYU School of Global Public Health

  Alden Lai is a health care management scholar who studies people's behaviors and cognition at work to understand how employees, managers, and leaders can improve workforce wellbeing, and consequently, safety performance in health care organizations. Lai uses theories and methodologies in psychology, health services research, and organizational behavior in his interdisciplinary work. Of particular interest are how health care workers engage in job crafting and experience work as meaningful, and how managers can better enable job crafting as well as "wise" proactivity among employees. Lai has consulted for federal and state governments, health systems, biopharmaceutical companies, and philanthropies internationally. He is currently Executive Advisor to the Global Wellbeing Initiative, an effort by Gallup (US) and the Wellbeing for Planet Earth Foundation (Japan) to foster a more inclusive and diverse understanding of wellbeing for research, practice, and policy. He is also the co-editor of a book on thriving at work for early career researchers to be published by Springer in 2023. Lai obtained his PhD in Health Policy and Management with a focus on organizational behavior at Johns Hopkins University, Master of Public Health at the University of Tokyo, and BA in psychology at the National University of Singapore.

  Kinshasa’s Ambiance: Remembering T.K. Biaya

  

  

  Our project for the Fellowship brings together a series of initiatives: two online events, a co-authored translation, an artistic installation, and the preparation of a journal issue dedicated to the memory of the Congolese scholar Tshikala Kayembe Biaya.

  These activities all concur to investigate the intersections among artistic creation, social criticism, and scholarship in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
  

  Fellows

  Pedro Monaville, Assistant Professor of History, NYUAD Arts and Humanities

  Pedro Monavile’s research focuses on the colonial and post-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His first monograph (to be published in 2022 by Duke University Press) is a study of the Congolese student movement at the time of the global 1960s. He has also published articles and book chapters on colonial memory and Congolese popular culture. He is currently working on two main projects: a monograph about the decolonization of the Congolese Catholic Church, and the publication of an edited volume around the work of the writer and scholar André Yoka Lye.
  

  Duncan Yoon, Assistant Professor, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU

  Duncan Yoon is Assistant Professor at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. His current book, Alluvial Dreams, examines representations of China in African literature. The manuscript was awarded the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Helen Tartar First Book Subvention in 2020. He has published several articles on Africa-China cultural relations and is an executive committee member for the Modern Language Association's (MLA) forum, African Literature to 1990. He served as a Fulbright Scholar to South Korea in 2004 and was a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress in 2018.

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• 2020-2021
  • Sarah Paul and Daniel Fogal
  • David Russell and Maryam Modjaz

  Believing What We Want to Believe

  

  

  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

  Sarah Paul, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean for Research and Professional Development, NYUAD Arts and Humanities

  Sarah Paul's research concerns agency and the philosophy of mind, focusing on the nature of intention and belief. She is also interested in questions about self-knowledge, self-control, and what it means to believe in ourselves and others when it comes to difficult actions. Paul came to NYUAD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has also held visiting positions at M.I.T. and Bowdoin College. The author of Philosophy of Action: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge 2021), which offers an accessible and inclusive overview of the major debates in the philosophy of action. Paul earned her BA magna cum laude from Carleton College, and her PhD from Stanford University.
  

  Daniel Fogal, Assistant Professor of Global Public Health, NYU School of Global Public Health

  Daniel Fogal is an Assistant Professor in the Program in Bioethics and Faculty Adviser for the Bioethics Minor at NYU’s School of Global Public Health. He earned his BA from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2006 and his PhD from NYU in 2016. Prior to his current appointment, Fogal was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the NYU Center for Bioethics, and prior to that he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Uppsala University in association with the Varieties of Normativity project (principal investigator: Matti Eklund). 
  

  Fogal specializes in ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Current work includes the nature of good reasoning, the notion of rationality relevant to decision-making capacity and informed consent, and conceptual engineering in bioethics. Past research has included work on the nature of rationality (“Rational Requirements and the Primacy of Pressure,” Mind), the nature of normative explanations (“The Metaphysics of Moral Explanations,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics), and the nature of both normative and motivating reasons (“Reasons, Reason, and Context,” in Weighing Reasons; “Deflationary Pluralism about Motivating Reasons,” in The Factive Turn in Epistemology). In addition to teaching and research, Fogal has been active in philosophical outreach programs and in organizing professional conferences and workshops.

  Understanding the Birth of Black Holes and Neutron Stars from Exploding Stars

  

  

  Black Holes (BHs) and Neutron Stars (NSs) are the densest objects in the Universe — indeed, BHs are so dense that even light, the fastest thing in the universe, cannot escape their superstrong gravitational pull — but how exactly they are born is still an outstanding question. We know they are produced during the deaths of massive stars, but whether they are produced from different kinds of massive star explosions called core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), or from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which are extremely energetic explosions, is still highly debated. 
  

  This project combines the expertise of two professors in a new way, for the first time, to attack this question in a two-pronged approach. This approach will impact many fields of astrophysics and answer fundamental questions about which kinds of stellar systems undergo which kinds of death, i.e., explode as which kind of SNe and which kind of remnants they leave behind.

  This is a low-risk, high-impact project as the majority of the data are already in hand. All code and data products are open-access, as is done with prior work by the NYU Modjaz SNYU group, which is in line with NSF’s mission for reproducible science.
  

  Fellows

  David Russell, Associate Professor and Program Head of Physics, NYUAD Science Division

  Dave Russell’s research interests concern accreting compact objects — black holes and neutron stars — and their energetic output in the form of radiation and jets. His work, analyzing a wealth of broadband (radio-infrared-optical-ultraviolet-X-ray) observations of X-ray binaries, has led to a deeper understanding of the accretion process in the extreme gravitational fields near compact objects. His current projects include investigating how outbursts start, how relativistic jets are launched and accelerated, how fast relativistic jets are in black holes in our galaxy, and how universal accretion and jet properties are, from small black holes to supermassive black holes.
  

  Maryam Modjaz, Associate Professor of Physics, NYU Arts and Science

  In a form of "stellar forensics" investigation, Maryam Modjaz and her team of stellar death detectives are pinpointing the stellar progenitors and the explosion conditions that lead to the various forms of stellar death for a massive star, in particular by examining the habitats of different kinds of explosions. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2007 and a BS from the University of California at Berkeley in 2000, where she also worked as a Miller Fellow from 2007-2010. In 2010-2011 she was a Hubble Fellow at Columbia University. The recipient of Harvard University's Fireman Prize for an outstanding PhD dissertation, her work has been featured on NPR, on Science360.org, in Astronomy Now, and in a feature article in UC Berkeley's California magazine. Modjaz has also appeared on stand-up comedy shows in NYC and on Swiss TV, and in September 2016, she was featured in the Apple ad for iPhone7 and Apple Watch Series 2 in her capacity as physics professor at NYU’s Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, garnering roughly 7 million views on YouTube.
  

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• 2019-2020
  • Al-Dabbagh and Iskander
  • Burt and Killilea
  • Hardmood Beck and Anker

  

  

  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

  May Al-Dabbagh, Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, NYUAD Social Science

  May Al-Dabbagh conducts research on gender and work in the Gulf using a combination of social psychology, public policy, and post-colonial feminist lenses. She has published in Organization Science, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, and Idafat: Arab Journal of Sociology (in Arabic). She has received fellowships from the Center of Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford), The Women and Public Policy Program (Harvard), and The Global Institute for Advanced Study and Tisch School of the Arts (NYU). Her current book project is on the experiences of motherhood and work by serial migrants in the context of emergent global cities. She also has a project on the geopolitics of knowledge production, and has developed a method called “Self Tracing” that uses dialogical exchange and critical pedagogy to theorize intersectionality in the global south. Finally, she is co-PI on the Arab Center for the Study of Art at NYUAD and has a number of collaborations with artists on projects that bridge the social sciences and arts, including: Making Space, Moving Bodies/Theorizing up, and Voice (re) Claimed. A graduate of Dhahran Ahliyya Schools (Saudi Arabia), she earned a BA (Harvard University) and a PhD (Oxford University) in psychology.
  

  Natasha N. Iskander, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service, NYU Wagner School of Public Policy

  Natasha Iskander conducts research on the relationship between migration and economic development. She looks at the ways that immigration and the movement of people across borders can provide the basis for the creation of new knowledge and of new pathways for political change. She has published widely on these questions, looking specifically at immigration, skill, economic development, and worker rights, with more than 30 articles and book chapters on these topics. Her first book, Creative State: Forty Years of Migration and Development Policy in Morocco and Mexico (Cornell University Press, ILR imprint, 2010), looked at the ways that migrant workers transformed the economic development policies of their countries of origin. Her forthcoming book, Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st Qatar and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 2021), examines the use of skill categories to limit freedom of movement and narrow access to political rights, in ways that have become increasingly salient with the hardening borders and the pressures of climate change.
  

  

  

  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

  John Burt, Associate Professor of Biology, NYUAD Science Division

  John Burt is an Associate Professor of Biology and Program Head for the NYU Abu Dhabi Environmental Studies program. Burt's research focuses on understanding how organisms respond to and cope with extreme environmental conditions, a topic of increasing scientific interest in recent years as global climate continues to change. While the Burt Lab's research is largely focused on corals and reef fishes, they also have ongoing multi-year projects focused on mangroves and seagrasses, using the extreme environmental conditions of the Arabian Gulf as a 'natural laboratory' to explore questions around adaptation and acclimation. He also has a long history of studying the ecological implications of coastal urbanization, seeking means to promote more sustainable development. Burt has published over 90 scholarly articles and book chapters in his decade at NYU Abu Dhabi, and his work has been cited over 3,000 times by the international science community. Funding sources include the US National Science Foundation, Qatar National Research Fund, Ford Foundation, and a number of regional agencies.
  

  Mary Killilea, Clinical Professor in the Departments of Biology and of Environmental Science, NYU Arts and Science

  Mary Killilea is Clinical Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies; Program Adviser Environmental Studies, at NYU's College of Arts and Science. Her research interests include the use of GIS, remote sensing and modeling to explore spatial and temporal variability in ecosystems.
  

  

  

  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

  Felix Hardmood Beck, Assistant Professor of Practice of Design, NYUAD Engineering

  Felix Hardmood Beck studied Visual Communication with focus on Media Design and Exhibition Design at the Berlin University of the Arts. He graduated with the terminal degree Diplom Designer (2007) and was appointed as Meisterschüler (2010) under the patronage of Joachim Sauter. Felix has gathered practical experience working as a media designer and user-experience professional from 2001 on. His projects as well as his works with ART+COM Studios and several other renowned German design agencies and architectural studios have been featured around the globe in a range of art and design publications, and in numerous festivals and exhibitions. From 2015 to 2020, he taught courses in the overlapping fields of art, design, technology and innovation at NYUAD, where he also founded the NTSI Lab and the Plastic Lab, receiving over USD 525,000 in research grants and related funding. In the UAE, he also consulted for several federal ministries and governmental departments and partners on the topics of Design Thinking and Innovation. Since 2020, he has been full professor at the University of Applied Sciences at the Münster School of Design (MSD).
  

  Peder Anker, Associate Professor, NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study

  Peder Anker’s teaching and research interests lie in the history of science, ecology, environmentalism, and design, as well as environmental philosophy. He has received research fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Dibner Institute, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and has been a visiting scholar at both Columbia University and the University of Oslo. He is the co-author of Global Design: Elsewhere Envisioned (Prestel, 2014), together with Louise Harpman and Mitchell Joachim. He is also the author of From Bauhaus to Eco-House: A History of Ecological Design (Louisiana State University Press 2010), which explores the intersection of architecture and ecological science, and Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2001), which investigates how the promising new science of ecology flourished in the British Empire. Professor Anker’s latest book explores the history of ecological debates in his country of birth, Norway: The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Peder Anker received his PhD from Harvard University in 1999.
  

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