COVID HELPS SHINE LIGHT ON CRUCIAL ACADEMIC RESEARCH
▶ NYUAD is playing its part in helping to beat the coronavirus
The vice chancellor of one of the UAE’s leading universities said the Covid-19 pandemic was helping to turn the spotlight on the crucial research academic institutes all around the world are doing.
Dr Mariet Westermann joined New York University Abu Dhabi in August 2019, not knowing just how significant the following year would be.
In 2020, as the coronavirus swept the world and the number of deaths increased, universities were to the fore in helping to find solutions to the global crisis.
Dr Westermann said NYUAD played its part.
In November, researchers at the university developed a test that could detect the coronavirus in asymptomatic patients and those in the early stages of infection.
“The year 2020 will go down as one of the great victories for university research,” Dr Westermann said.
“I know this is hard to imagine. When you see that the world developed these vaccines so quickly, that was partly because the pharmaceutical companies stepped in.
“But all of those technologies for developing vaccines had first been developed out of university research that took decades before they even knew it was going to be used for Covid-19.
“In our own university, we pivoted immediately.
“Our researchers initiated unique projects to tackle the pandemic, contribute to beating it and better understand its impact.”
The pandemic threw up tough challenges alongside research opportunities, with university heads concerned about the impact of travel bans would have on attracting overseas talent.
“I was worried about what the effect of the pandemic would be on our recruitment of students around the world, as our students come from more than 115 countries,” Dr Westermann said.
“But our success was phenomenal.
“This [year] was the largest class we have ever admitted. So that was a great success.”
Last year, 490 students from 82 countries enrolled at NYUAD, up from 429 students in 2019 and 380 in 2018.
Dr Westermann said the only difference was that not as many students were able to visit the campus in person.
“This pandemic has been incredibly challenging for most universities because we have so many wonderful young people who need to be together and work with their professors to develop research,” she said.
Although about 20 per cent of the students in this year’s cohort are Emirati, Dr Westermann said universities in the UAE needed to encourage more citizens to pursue doctorates.
Having home-grown talent would mean universities in the Emirates would not have to rely on international professors.
“It would be wonderful if, in the future, there will be more Emirati professors in front of the classroom and also more
Emiratis conducting research in the leading labs in the UAE,” Dr Westermann said.
She gave the example of the UAE’s mission to Mars in which many Emiratis were involved.
Dr Westermann said universities could build on these opportunities to encourage more citizens to seek doctorates and engage in advanced research and teaching careers.
Speaking about how the pandemic affected education as a whole, Dr Westermann said people would have to wait and see.
“We need to understand what has social distancing for so long and being out of school for so long done to so many?” she said.
Dr Westermann said a fellow professor at NYUAD was working
with peers around the world to study the pandemic’s psychological and social effects.
And a robotics professor helped develop a grocery delivery drone for people who were in living in quarantine.
“We had researchers design prototypes and fabricate reusable masks – a useful thing because there’s a lot of environmental waste around masks,” Dr Westermann said.
In July, NYUAD awarded 10 grants for research projects that have the potential to mitigate the effects of Covid-19.
The Covid-19 Facilitator Research Grants were given to engineering, science and social sciences projects.
Two more grants were awarded in the fields of biomedicine and engineering.
We need to understand what has social distancing for so long and being out of school done to so many
DR MARIET WESTERMANN
New York University Abu Dhabi