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The Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES) and the Center for Cyber Security (CCS) at NYUAD are jointly inviting scientific proposals for the activation of an interdisciplinary research project at the crossroads of both centers. The ideal interdisciplinary project should touch on aspects related to cities and cyber-security, and propose research that truly reflects the vision of both, CITIES and CCS.

To learn more about the two centers, their vision, and research goals please visit: CITIES and CCS. The selected project will receive funding for a two-year post-doctoral position and one full month of summer salary per year to be distributed among the project PIs.

In line with the NYUAD vision, this program is designed to foster collaboration among faculty from different research centers and divisions, and it is open to any NYUAD faculty. The proposal must involve two faculty members, with at most one affiliated with either Center (e.g. either a faculty member from each of the two funding centers, a faculty member from one of the two funding centers, and an external faculty member, or two external faculty members).

Proposals are due by the end of the day on Sunday, January 10, 2021. They are expected to be around three pages long and should follow this template. All proposals will be reviewed by a committee representing both CITIES and CCS, and a single project will be selected.

For any inquiries please contact nyuad.cities@nyu.edu or ccsad@nyu.edu.

Over the last four years, the Institute for Transportation Planning and Systems (IVT) at ETH Zurich and CITIES at NYU Abu Dhabi have gathered urban traffic data from over 40 cities worldwide, including London, Tokyo, and Zurich. In total, almost 5 billion vehicles covering a combined time span of 3.8 years were detected.

Now, it is our pleasure to announce the publication of our dataset for public research purposes.

Our “UTD19” dataset mainly consists of measurements from 22’820 loop detectors, making it the largest multi-city traffic dataset publicly available. Traffic is recorded using vehicle flow and occupancy (or speed) in relatively small aggregation intervals, typically 3-5min. In addition, we geo-coded the location of all detectors and the associated roads in WGS84 coordinates making map matching as easy as possible.

Sign Up for UTD19 Traffic Data.

Professor Kinga Makovi, Principal Investigator at CITIES Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy, is working with a network of academics to study the immediate, short, and long-term social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Germany and Singapore.

Funded by the COVID-19 Facilitator Research Fund at NYUAD, and supported by the Research Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES), the overarching goal of the research is to study a diversity of outcomes across contexts that have seen the different impact of the pandemic and different policy responses to it.

Professor Monica Menendez, director of NYUAD CITIES, recently provided comments for Khaleej Times! In the interview, she discussed how Covid-19 restrictions have led to several environmental gains that can be sustained in the future!

Read more

Congratulations to professor Azza Abouzied on receiving an NYUAD Research Covid-19 Facilitator Research Award on Policy Optimisation for Epidemic Control. In her research paper, professor Abouzied proposed to build an epidemic simulator that supports the goal of suggesting a plan of counteracting the spread of an epidemic. In particular, she addressed the design of a domain specific language that allows the declarative and easy specification of disease models and interventions, and tracks the provenance of a wide range of disease and intervention parameters to ensure reproducibility.

The 1st CITIES symposium took place on November 24, 2019 at NYU Abu Dhabi, bringing together scholars from world-leading institutions to discuss cutting-edge research on the interdisciplinary challenges and opportunities surrounding cities. Speakers at the symposium included the keynote speaker Jeffery Bohn, and Alfredo Morales, Chandrasekaran Mohan, Marcia Castro, Maya Abou Zeid, Nikolar Groliminis, and Paul Wadde.

Read more about the symposium here.