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Legacy Centers and Initiatives

We leave nothing behind but legacies.

Since its inception in 2010, the Research Institute NYUAD has funded a total of 36 centers and strategic initiatives, spanning the disciplines from science to humanities, and engineering to social sciences. 

While no longer active, the impact of these centers and initiatives continues to ripple through their publications, capacity building, and global collaborations. This page honors the legacy they left behind.

  • Akkasah — Explores the histories and contemporary practices of photography in the Arab world from comparative perspectives.

  • al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art — al Mawrid, the Arab Center for the Study of Art, researches the visual arts and photography of Western Asia and North Africa, advancing regional perspectives within global Art History. It seeks to expand traditional art historical frameworks through interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches.

  • Center For Global Sea-Level Change (CSLC) — Combines observations and computational models to understand past and project future sea-level rise.

  • Center for Prototype Climate Modeling (CPCM) — Bridges the gap between climate theory, modeling, and observation, with the goal of improving our ability to predict future climate change.

  • Center for Space Science (CSS) (Merged into the Center for Astrophysics and Space Science) — Studies and interprets the oscillations of stars to make inferences about their size, age, mass, rotation, and magnetism.

  • Center for Stability, Instability, and Turbulence (SITE) — Instability of dynamics flows and their transition to turbulence are widespread phenomena in engineering, computer science, geophysics, biophysics, and the natural environment. Stability, Instability, and Weak Turbulence research center will develop novel enabling technology to deal with this phenomena.

  • Center For Technology And Economic Development (CTED) — Enhance technology-driven economic development in developing regions.

  • Computational Modeling of Normal and Abnormal Cortical Processing (Article) — Establishment of a computational neuroscience research group that will address theoretical and computational modeling of neuronal processing in the normal and abnormal brain (e.g., schizophrenia, Alzheimer's).

  • Data Center and Cloud Computing Center (Merged into High-Performance Computing) —Design future data center and cloud computing platforms that provide improved performance in the aspects of security, resilience, scalability, and flexibility, among others.

  • Environmental Monitoring Initiative — Develop visualization capability for the regional coastal environment using satellite imagery and field observations.

  • Global Ties For Children (TIES) — Designs, evaluates, and advises on programs and policies to improve the lives of children and youth in the most vulnerable regions across the globe.

  • Humanities Research Fellowships for the Study of the Arab World — The Research Institute NYUAD embarked on a multi-year research fellowship program in the Humanities. This program aimed to help create an energetic, multi-faceted research environment for the Humanities and the study of the Arab world at NYUAD's campus.

  • Library of Arabic Literature — The Library of Arabic Literature offers Arabic editions and English translations of significant works of Arabic literature, with an emphasis on the 7th to 19th centuries.

  • Natural Variation In Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii, A Model Algae Biofuel Species — Studied the natural variation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in preparation for the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology.

  • Research And Empirical Analysis Of Labor Migration (REALM) — Aims to shed light on the processes that sustain unfair migrant labor by improving our empirical understanding of the structures and dynamics implicated in recruitment for temporary work in the Gulf region (and, where relevant, elsewhere).

  • The Abu Dhabi New Generation Survey (Article) — Survey of Emirati youth studying gene-environment interactions and how that affects their transition from school to adulthood.

  • The Center for Global Public Service and Social Impact — Generates cross-national measures of public service performance, inventories of best practices, and a variety of reports, training materials, and case studies.

  • The Neuroscience Of Language Laboratory (NELLAB) — Seeks to find how the brain mediates the most critical aspects of our communication system and which part of the brain facilitates language.

  • UAE Cultural Heritage Multi-Media Project — Validates and gives voice to the individual experiences of Emirati cultural heritage via a multimedia exhibition platform.