In his second week as a wide-eyed freshman, Qutaiba Al-Nuaimy said yes to being part of something big. He didn’t hesitate for a second when he heard that NYU Abu Dhabi researchers and Lockheed Martin were working together on drones that could help monitor melting glaciers in the Arctic. He was in.
That moment set the stage for the next four years. Al-Nuaimy said yes to every conference, trade show, internship, study abroad, J-Term, and research opportunity that came his way.
“Saying yes allowed me to cultivate a toolkit,” he explains and “be able to approach different problems with all the tools in my arsenal. For me, that’s what NYUAD was all about.”
Major: Electrical Engineering
Home Country: UK
Current: Forward-deployed software engineer, Palantir, UAE
Al-Nuaimy, an electrical engineering major from the UK, is not only an advocate of experiential learning, he could be the poster boy for it. At NYUAD he managed to juggle several industry-related extracurriculars with classroom work though at one point, he admits, it became too much.
I'm saying yes to all of these opportunities so I can impact the industry as a whole and work on problems that truly matter. I'm only able to do any of this thanks to all of my different experiences at NYUAD.
Saying yes, he discovered, is no walk in the park. “I realized pretty early on that I was less interested in academia, I had to make a decision: Am I going to prioritize my GPA or experiential learning, projects and internships?” He decided to prioritize building experiences.
"I'm saying yes to all of these opportunities so I can impact the industry as a whole and work on problems that truly matter. I'm only able to do any of this thanks to all of my different experiences at NYUAD."