Research

The multidisciplinary approach at NYU Abu Dhabi encourages researchers to address some of the most pressing issues affecting the globe, while simultaneously asking questions that further the basic understanding of nature and the universe.

The fusion of science, math, and other academic disciplines has resulted in the creation of collaborative research projects and state-of-the-art core technology platforms, in which questions and problems are tackled by academics of international distinction.

NYUAD has more than 80 faculty labs and designated multidisciplinary Research Institute Centers.

Core Technology Platforms

Research Institute Centers

Undergraduate Research

Faculty Research

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Shady Amin
Associate Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Marine Microbial Ecology; Environmental Microbiology

Marine Microbial Ecology - Amin Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Stephane Boissinot
Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Evolutionary Genomics

Evolutionary Genomics Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
John Burt
Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Marine Biology; Coral Reefs; Ecology; Climate Adaptation

Marine Biology Lab

Water Research Center

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Dipesh Chaudhury
Assistant Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Neural Circuits; Mood Disorders; Memory Loss

Laboratory of Neural Systems and Behavior

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Claude Desplan

Affiliated Professor, NYU NY Silver Professor; Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Developmental Neurobiology

Center for Genomics and Systems Biology

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Sehamuddin Galadari
Associate Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology

Galadari Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Alexis Gambis
Assistant Professor of Biology, Film and New Media

RESEARCH AREA
Visualization; Experimental; Evolutionary Developmental; Film

Laboratory of Experimental Cinema

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Kristin Gunsalus

Affiliated Professor, NYU NY
Professor of Biology; Co-Director, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology; Director of Bioinformatics, NYUAD

RESEARCH AREA
Functional Genomics

Center for Genomics and Systems Biology

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Youssef Idaghdour
Assistant Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Population and Medical Genomics; Gene-Environment Interactions

Idaghdour Lab — Environmental Genomics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Aashish Jha
Assistant Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Population Genetics, Microbiome, Metagenomics, ELSI, Heritage, Genomics

Genetic Heritage Group

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Mazin Magzoub
Associate of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Delivery of Antitumor Agents and Therapeutics for Amyloid Diseases

Magzoub Lab: Biophysics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Piergiorgio Percipalle
Program Head of Biology; Associate Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Molecular Genetics; Cell Biology

Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Kirsten Sadler Edepli
Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Liver Regeneration; Epigenetics; ER Stress; Cancer; Fatty Liver; Zebrafish; Mice

Sadler Edepli Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Kourosh Salehi-Ashtiani
Associate Professor of Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Algal Systems Biology

Laboratory of Algal Systems and Synthetic Biology

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
David Scicchitano
Molecular Biology, Genomic Maintenance Mechanics

RESEARCH AREA
Molecular Biology, Genomic Maintenance Mechanics
RESEARCH INSTITUTE CENTERS
- Center for Genomics and Systems Biology
- Public Health Research Center
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Alan Healy
Assistant Professor of Chemistry

RESEARCH AREA
Chemical Biology; Natural Product Synthesis; Automated Synthesis; Drug Discovery

The Healy Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Serdal Kirmizialtin
Assistant Professor of Chemistry

RESEARCH AREA
Physical Chemistry, Computational Science, Soft Matter, Enzyme Actions

Kirmizialtin Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Pance Naumov
Professor of Chemistry

RESEARCH AREA
Materials Science

Smart Materials Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Wael Rabeh
Associate Professor of Chemistry

RESEARCH AREA
Enzymology; Protein Structures

Structural Biology and Biophysical Chemistry Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Ali Trabolsi
Program Head; Associate Professor of Chemistry

RESEARCH AREA
Supramolecular Multifunctional Systems

Trabolsi Research Group

Water Research Center
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Azza Abouzied
Associate Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
Designing Intuitive Data Querying Tools

Human Data Interaction Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Riyadh Baghdadi
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
Compilers, Programming Languages, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, High Performance Computing

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Djellel Difallah
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
Crowdsourcing, Machine Learning, Knowledge Management & Discovery

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Nizar Habash
Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREAS
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Arabic Language Processing

Computational Approaches to Modeling Language Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Sana Odeh
Clinical Professor

RESEARCH AREA
Information Systems, Web Development, e-learning Systems

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Christina Pöpper
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
Information and Communication Security

Cyber Security and Privacy Lab

Center for Cyber Security

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Talal Rahwan
Associate Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agent Systems, Cooperative Game Theory, Computational Social Science

Data Science and AI Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Saurabh Ray
Program Head; Associate Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
Algorithms; Computational Geometry; Artificial Intelligence; Machine Learning

Computational Geometry Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Hanan Salam
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
Human-Machine Interaction; Human-Robot Interaction; Artificial Intelligence for Mental Health; Bias in Artificial Intelligence; Automatic Human Behavior Analysis; Social Robotics; Intelligent Systems; Affective Computing

Social Machines and RoboTics Lab (SMART)

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Yasir Zaki
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

RESEARCH AREA
ICTD; JavaScript; 5G; Wireless Network; Clean-Slate Web

Communication Networks Lab
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Diogo Arsénio
Associate Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Partial Differential Equations, Collisional Kinetic Theory

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Marwa Banna
Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Emerging Scholar

RESEARCH AREA
Random Matrix Theory, Free Probability Theory, Matrix Concentration Inequalities, Mathematical Aspects of Deep Learning, Weak Dependence

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Sofiane Bouarroudj
Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Representation Theory; Mathematical Physics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Federico Camia
Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Statistical Physics; Probability Theory

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Qingtao Chen
Assistant Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Mathematical Physics; Quantum Topology and Global Differential Geometry

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Tej-eddine Ghoul
Assistant Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Partial Differential Equations

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
David Holland
Affiliated Professor, NYU NY
Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Climate Science, Sea Level

Center for Global Sea Level Change

Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory New York

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Nader Masmoudi
Professor

RESEARCH AREA
Arithmetical Dynamics; Arithmetic Geometry; Number Theory

Center for Stability, Instability, and Turbulence

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Arman Mimar
Assistant Professor of Practice of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Arithmetical Dynamics; Arithmetic Geometry; Number Theory

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Francesco Paparella
Associate Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Geophysical Fluids; Earth-Systems Processes

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Hisham Sati
Program Head; Associate Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA

Mathematical Physics, Quantum Field Theory, Differential Geometry, Algebraic Topology, Geometric and Topological Aspects of Physics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Ilya Spitkovsky
Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Analysis, Operator and Matrix Theory

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Pierre Youssef
Associate Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Probability, Convex Geometry, Random Matrices, Random Graphs

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Weiren Zhao
Assistant Professor of Mathematics

RESEARCH AREA
Functional Analysis, Harmonic Analysis, PDEs, Fluid Dynamics, Plasma Physics
RESEARCH INSTITUTE CENTERS
- Computational Modeling of Normal and Abnormal Cortical Processing
- Center for Global Sea Level Change
- Center for Prototype Climate Modeling
- Center for Stability, Instability, and Turbulence
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Francesco Arneodo
Associate Dean of Science;
Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
Astrophysics; Particle Physics

Astroparticle Physics Lab

Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Ian Dobbs-Dixon
Assistant Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
Planetary Interiors; Atmospheric Dynamics

Center for Space Science

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Joseph Gelfand
Associate Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
Supernovae; Stars; Pulsar Wind Nebulae

Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Rafael Maria Gutierrez
Visiting Research Professor

RESEARCH AREA
Complex Systems, Thermodynamics, Statistical Physics, Entropy, Information, Innovation

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Marta Losada
Dean of Science; Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
High Energy Physics, Elementary Particle Phenomenology and Cosmology, Experimental High Energy Physics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Andrea Valerio Macciò
Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
Dark Energy; Dark Matter; Galaxies; Black Holes; Cosmology

Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics

Galaxy Formation Group

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
David Russell
Associate Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
Black Holes; Neutron Stars

Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
George Shubeita
Assistant Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
Biological Physics, Molecular Physics, Molecular Sensors, New Imaging Techniques

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Ingyin Zaw
Associate Professor of Physics

RESEARCH AREA
Particle Physics; Astronomy

Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics
RESEARCH INSTITUTE CENTERS
- Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics
- Center for Space Science
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Diogo Almeida
Associate Professor of Psychology and Biology

RESEARCH AREA
Neurolinguistics, Language Processing

Language, Mind and Brain

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Jocelyn Bélanger
Assistant Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Social Cognition; Goal-Pursuit; Belief Formation; Self-Regulation

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Olivia Cheung
Assistant Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
How the human brain perceives the visual world

Objects and Knowledge Laboratory

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Daryl Fougnie
Assistant Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Perception, Memory

Fougnie Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
PJ Henry
Associate Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Social Psychology; Prejudice; Discrimination; Intergroup Relations

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
David Melcher
Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Cognitive Neuroscience, Perception, Attention, Working Memory, Eye Movements

Perception and Active Cognition Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Jaime Napier
Program Head; Associate Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Gender, Inequality, Heteronormativity

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Bas Rokers
Associate Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Visual Perception; Motion Processing; Depth Perception; Neuroimaging; Virtual Reality

Rokers Vision Laboratory

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Jon Sprouse
Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Linguistics, Experimental Syntax

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Kartik Sreenivasan
Assistant Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Short-Term Memory, Working Memory

Sreenivasan Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Andrea Vial
Assistant Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Social Psychology, Gender, Stereotyping, Power, Morality

Social Roles & Beliefs Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Robert Volcic
Assistant Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Perception; Vision; Haptics, Motor Control; Sensorimotor Integration

Volcic Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Antje Von Suchodoletz
Associate Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Child Development,
Early Childhood Education, Caregiver-Child Interactions

Teaching, Learning, and Development Lab

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Theodore Waters
Assistant Professor of Psychology

RESEARCH AREA
Attachment and Autobiographical Memory
RESEARCH INSTITUTE CENTERS
- Neuroscience of Language Lab