From improving our understanding on amblyopia, commonly known as lazy eye, — to coming up with better disease mitigation public health strategies in developing countries, NYU Abu Dhabi postdocs will be traveling to New York on a three-week grant program to progress their research and understanding of a wide array of subjects.
The NYU Abu Dhabi Postdoc Collaborative Grant Program is sending six postdocs to New York City this summer where they will work closely with chosen faculty mentors on a multitude of research topics. This grant creates new or enhances existing collaboration among all three campuses across Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and New York and also saw the broadening of the program, with postdocs from NYU Shanghai and KAIST traveling to New York as well.
Abdalla Mohamed is a postdoc working in the Center for Brain and Health who has been selected for this grant.
Mohamed is collecting data for patients with amblyopia, more popularly known as lazy eye, and analyzing these statistics under Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science Jonathan Winawer in New York.
Professor Winawer is one of the developers of an open source neuroimaging software that Mohamed is using to analyze data and will be able to provide valuable insight into understanding the technical aspects of this software tool.
Besides looking forward to the opportunity to learn from Professor Winawer, Mohamed sees the three weeks in New York as “a good opportunity to network for more collaborations in the future.” Mohamed added, “I’m trying to expand my research and not only focus on projects I’m assigned to but also to expand the horizon of research here.
Nirmin Juber from the Public Health Research Center is another selected postdoc. Juber was first drawn to join NYU Abu Dhabi from a project that caught her eye: The UAE Healthy Future study. The aim is to determine the risks and find out why certain non-communicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart diseases are prevalent in the UAE.
Juber’s current projects focus on understanding gestational diabetes, a type of diabetes that can occur during pregnancy, as well as researching polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder among females of reproductive age that is prevalent in the GCC region.
Passionate about public health, Juber looks forward to working closely with Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Epidemiology Mari Armstrong-Hough in New York who has rich experience in communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and non-communicable diseases.
Professor Armstrong-Hough is an expert in double burden disease settings where both communicable and non-communicable diseases co-exist — a growing public health situation in Juber’s home country Indonesia.
With Professor Armstrong-Hough’s experience in African and Asian countries as well as her expertise in methodological approach in understanding the data, Juber will be bringing her own data on Indonesia’s population to better understand and quantify the double burden disease there to improve Indonesia’s public health strategy.
