Cities

Center fоr Interacting Urban Networks

External Funds

  • Sponsor: McCourt Foundation
    • Description: “A digital health approach to preventive health – The case of PrEP,” by Prof. Kinga Makovi (CITIES PI) as a Co-PI of this project; other co-PIs: Achim Edelmann and Christian Mueller
    • Date of Award: 2023
    • Duration: 2 years
    • Amount: 279k AED 
  • Sponsor: Mubadala
    • Description: Mubadala-NYUAD Collaborative Student Research Project. The award supports research projects which train undergraduate students on joint academic and industry projects. In partnership with Mubadala Health, Prof. Azza Abouzied and her team  are creating a tool to help trainee nurses better communicate within medical team through using LLMs to help them better formulate their reports. 
    • Date of Award: 2023-2024
    • Duration: 1 year
    • Amount: 44k AED
  • Sponsor: Mubadala
    • Description: Mubadala-NYUAD Collaborative Student Research Project. The award supports research projects which train undergraduate students on joint academic and industry projects. This grant was received under Prof. Farah Shamout. 
    • Date of Award: 2024
    • Duration: 4 months
    • Amount: 50k AED
  • Sponsor: Mubadala Foundation
    • Description: Preserving our vital natural environments in UAE, region and beyond – John Burt. Support the conduct of research focused on understanding and preserving the unique natural environments of the UAE and its surrounding region. By employing multidisciplinary approaches, including climate monitoring, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development strategies, the project aims to develop effective solutions for mitigating environmental threats and bolstering long-term resilience in these critical ecosystems. 
    • Date of Award: January 2024
    • Duration: 5 years
    • Amount: 18,362,625 AED
  • Sponsor: Dalio Philanthorpies
    • Description: Identification and enhancement of the world’s most heat-tolerant corals – John Burt. Stimulate the connectivity of Gulf coral larvae to identify priority areas for conservation, allow for long-term monitoring of priority coral reefs for physicochemical environmental parameters and help develop satellite-based monitoring for near real-time early warnings of marine heat waves that precipitate coral bleaching. 
    • Date of Award: January 2024
    • Duration: 2 years
    • Amount: 3,672,525 AED
  • Sponsor: Atlantis the Palm
    • Description: Atlantis Atlas Project – John Burt. Burt will be using this gift to help develop microbial pro-biotics to help enhance the thermal tolerance of corals that are increasingly under pressure from climate change-related temperature stress in the Arabian Gulf.  This is the second $10,000 research gift that Burt has received from Atlantis, showing their strong support for Burt’s reef conservation related research
    • Date of Award: September 2023
    • Duration: 1 year
    • Amount: 36,725.25 AED
  • Sponsor: Atlantis the Palm, Dubai
    • Description: Eco-physiological implications of thermal stress on the grouper Cephalopholis hemistiktos – John Burt. Experiments over 18 months to determine the ecological and physiological implications of extreme temperatures on a local grouper species 
    • Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Amount: 36,725.25 AED
  • Sponsor: Abu Dhabi Ports
    • Description: Coral relocation for impact mitigation: Guidelines for best practices and a three-year assessment of performance – John Burt. Provide expertise for design, implementation and review of a coral relocation program at Khalifa Port, as well as develop a 70 page guidelines for best practices for coral relocation to be published open access for regional users
    • Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 4 years
    • Amount: 150,573.52 AED
  • Sponsor: American University of Sharjah FRG Program
    • Description: The importance of hydrodynamic variability in maintaining Sharjah’s diverse coral reefs – John Burt, with Aaron Bartholomew (AUS). Surveys and analyses of six coral reefs across Sharjah waters to determine status and trends in reef health
    • Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Amount: 150,573.52 AED
  • Sponsor: CSA Research LLC
    • Description: Monetary gift to fund Belitic Calcium Sulfoaluminate Cement research to Prof. Kemal Celik 
    • Amount:  367,252.5 AED
    • Date of Award: 2022 and 2023
    • Duration: 1 year
  • Sponsor: Technology Innovation Institute (TII) under Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), Abu Dhabi, UAE
    • Description: Developing libraries of adversarial and backdoor attacks and defenses for computer vision systems, received by Prof. Muhammad Shafique.
    • Amount:  6.81 Million AED
    • Date of Award: 1 January 2023
    • Duration: 3.5 years

2022

  • Sponsor: Technology Innovation Institute (TII)
    • Description: A Research grant for an Innovative project, “CASTLE” to Prof. Muhammad Shafique on the next-generation secure machine learning, from the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) – a leading global advanced technology research center in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
    • Date of Award: 2022
    • Duration: 3 years and 5 months
    • Amount: ~1.85m USD
  • Sponsor: Accuracy
    • Description: A Research grant to engage NYUAD Undergraduate students to get involved in the Digital Twins Project
    • Date of Award: 2022
    • Duration: 1 year
    • Amount: ~5k USD
  • Sponsor: NYU Research Catalyst Prize (RCP)
    • Description: “A digital health approach to preventive health – The case of PrEP,” by Prof. Kinga Makovi (CITIES PI) as a Co-PI of this project.
    • Date of Award: May 3, 2022
    • Duration: 1 year and 6 months
    • Amount: 15,500 USD
  • Sponsor: ADEK ASPIRE 2020 Grant
    • Description: Under the application entitled “Scalable Delta Processing of Constrained Optimization Queries” Prof. Azza Abouzied (Co-PI, NYUAD) has been building tools for decision-making in uncertain contexts with changing data and changing constraints. Date of Award: January, 2022
    • Duration: 3 years
    • Amount: ~977k AED (~266k USD)

2021

  • Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF), Virginia, USA
    • Description: Collaborative Research: Discovering Precipitation Pathways in Reactive Magnesium Oxide Cements via Nanoscale Interfacial Engineering for Durable Structural Composites by prof. Kemal Celik (CITIES Investigator).
    • Date of Award: June 1, 2021
    • Duration: >3 years
    • Amount: ~250k USD
  • Sponsor: HSBC Centre of Sustainable Finance – MENAT
    • Description: Decarbonizing of cement production with limestone and calcined clay by Prof. Kemal Celik (CITIES Investigator).Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 2021-2022
    • Amount: ~122k USD 
  • Sponsor: ADEK ASPIRE 2020 Grant
    • Description: Towards extreme energy efficiency through cross-layer approximate computing, Single-PI AARE (Abu Dhabi/ASPIRE Award for Research Excellence) to Prof. Muhammad Shafique.
    • Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 2021-2024
    • Amount: ~271k USD
  • Sponsor: Sandooq Al Watan Applied Research & Development (SWARD)
    • Description: ReThink Brine Challenge, Prototype development for synthetic brucite and calcium carbonate production from desalination reject brine by Prof. Kemal Celik (CITIES Investigator).Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 2021-2022
    • Amount: ~7k USD 
  • Sponsor: Sandooq Al Watan Applied Research & Development (SWARD)
    • Description: Characterization and manufacturing of lunar regolith simulants by Profs. Kemal Celik (CITIES Investigator) and Tarek Abdoun.Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 2021-2023
    • Amount: ~293k USD 
  • Sponsor: Simmetrico Operations DWC–LLC
    • Design and development of brine concrete panel for Expo 2020 UAE Pavillion by Prof. Kemal Celik (CITIES Investigator).Date of Award: 2021
    • Duration: 2021
    • Amount: ~11k USD 

2020

  • Sponsor: Cranmore Partners
    • Description: The Cranmore Partners CITIES program supports 4 exceptional NYUAD undergraduate students with a demonstrated interest in research and academia, by providing a highly competitive one-year research opportunity in CITIES.
    • Date of Award: 1 September 2020
    • Duration: 1 year (renewable)
    • Amount: 25k USD
  • Sponsor: NYUAD COVID-19 Facilitator Research Fund Grant
    • Description: The overarching goal of the research (Funded by the COVID-19 Facilitator Research Fund at NYUAD, and CITIES) is to study a diversity of outcomes across contexts that have seen different impacts of the pandemic and different policy responses to it. Assistant Professors of Social Research and Public Policy Kinga Makovi (Co-PI, NYUAD) and Malte Reichelt (NYUAD) have been working with a network of academics to study the immediate, short, and long-term social impact of the pandemic in the US, Germany, and Singapore. This is a multi-university collaboration that will yield a long stream of publications.
    • Date of Award: July 2020
    • Duration: >1 year 
    • Amount: 35k USD
  • Sponsor: NYUAD – COVID-19 Facilitator Research Fund Grant
    • Description: Under the application entitled “Integrating Policy Optimization in Epidemic Modeling” prof. Azza Abouzied (Co-PI, NYUAD) has been building a tool (Funded by the COVID-19 Facilitator Research Fund at NYUAD) that can guide policymakers with plans that can curb and control an epidemic while taking into consideration societal and economic costs. By providing the tool, the right data, and parameters for each administration, the system can guide policymakers to better control the COVID-19 epidemic locally. The tool provides governments with the possible actions that are within their capabilities while taking into account its cost-effectiveness. 
    • Date of Award: July 2020
    • Duration: >1 year 
    • Amount: 30k USD
  • Sponsor: Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK)
    • Description: Abu Dhabi Award for Research Excellence 2019. Synthesis of brucite from reject brine and its utilization for concrete block production and CO2 sequestration by prof. Kemal Celik (CITIES Investigator).
    • Date of Award: 2020
    • Duration: >3 years
    • Amount: ~272k USD
  • Sponsor: SwissRe Institute under the Quantum Cities TM Initiative
    • Description: Gift towards CITIES to support the center’s research and its activities.
    • Date of Award: 2020
    • Duration: Originally 5 years, reduced to 2 years because of the effects of COVID-19 on Swiss Re.
    • Amount: ~200k USD

2019

  • Sponsor: SwissRe Institute under the Quantum Cities TM Initiative
    • Description: Gift towards CITIES to support the center’s research and its activities.
    • Date of Award: 1 September 2019
    • Duration: Originally 5 years, reduced to 2 years because of the effects of COVID-19 on Swiss Re.
    • Amount: 500k USD

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