2023 Award Recipient: Salah Rouhani, MSc, Class of 2015
Position: Assistant Manager, Office of Research, NYU Abu Dhabi
Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE
Salah was part of the second cohort of graduates at NYU Abu Dhabi and graduated with Honors. He received the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Scholarship for Exceptional Emirati Students, the NYU Founders Day Award, and he was a University Honors Scholar. Salah grew up in Dubai and commuted home from campus over the weekends. Salah also helped set up karting and golf activities as a student leader.
Salah majored in psychology and minored in political science, and joined the Kawader program as a researcher in 2015. The Kawader program is a unique, national capacity-building research fellowship program that allows outstanding graduates to gain experience in a cutting-edge academic research environment.
Salah’s research focus was social and developmental psychology, with an emphasis on early childhood development. He then went on to study organizational and social psychology at The London School of Economics for his Masters (MSc).
Salah joined the Office of Research in 2017, where he oversaw the management and the operations of the Kawader fellowship program. He has seen the campus community evolve over time, from Downtown campus to Saadiyat.
Salah grew the program in its early years from 5 researchers to over 26 researchers today, expanding to include postdoctoral positions. Salah inspires and helps nurture young Emirati talent in the field of research. With his contributions to the strategic direction of the program, it continues to grow, creating more opportunities for talented UAE nationals who dedicate their careers to the realm of research.
Among his colleagues, Salah is known for his warmth, collegiality, steady leadership, strategic mindset, and unique ability to resolve challenges through conversation and mediation. His commitment to the researchers in his program, and researcher capacity building in the UAE, reflects and enables the core priorities of the Office of Research and NYUAD.