Ahead of the upcoming season of The NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Institute’s virtual talks, the public can still catch up with highlights from the previous season.
The series is in line with NYUAD’s commitment to enrich the global community through exploring topics that offer the public a deeper insight into a wide range of themes, while the online format provides wider access to the engaging conversations.
Last season’s most popular talks include:
Privacy in a Globally Interconnected World
In 2019, it was estimated that more than 20 billion internet-of-things (IoT) devices were active around the world. The wealth of data collected by IoT devices, such as smartphones, fitness trackers, smart bulbs, and cleaning robots, raises questions about privacy since much of the data processing takes place through the public internet and in servers around the world. This talk discussed the technological enforcement of privacy, explaining the concept of end-to-end-encryption, and presenting solutions for privacy-preserving computation. The speaker was Director of the Modern Microprocessors Architectures (MoMA) Laboratory and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NYUAD Michail Maniatakos. Watch here.
Nature’s Shapes and Patterns and the Instabilities That Create Them
It could be argued that mathematics was born with the purpose of making sense of nature’s patterns. But, unbeknownst to most of the public, mathematicians have long been working at conceptual tools for making sense of nature’s irregular, never-repeating, and time-changing patterns. This talk illustrated some examples and general ideas stemming from the theory of instability, one of the most powerful ways to understand why natural phenomena look the way they do. The speaker was Associate Professor of Mathematics at NYUAD Francesco Paparella. Watch here.
Icehouse to Greenhouse What Is the Role of Sea Ice
The annual melting and freezing of sea ice constitute one of the largest seasonal phenomena on our planet. NYUAD researchers are working to advance our understanding of how sea ice changes, as anticipating future changes is of critical importance to the overall state of the climate system. This talk described what sea ice is, why it’s an essential part of the climate system, and how we have observed and understood it since the Heroic Age of Exploration up until the modern satellite era. The speaker was Research Scientist at the NYUAD Center for Global Sea Level Change Clare Eayrs. Watch here.
What to Do When the Sun Turns Violent in 2025?
The sun generates huge magnetic storms with some regularity and streams billions of tons of charged particles. These storms are supposed to reach their peak activity in 2025. With it comes the likelihood of a large impact on the Earth, with potential damage to our communications systems and power grids, causing enormous strife and financial loss. We missed a few such storms in the last 25 years. Will we be lucky and miss them again? This talk discussed what happens inside the sun that leads to such storms. The speaker was Professor of Physics and Mathematics, Chair for Innovation, and Dean Emeritus of NYU Tandon School of Engineering Katepalli Sreenivasan. Watch here.
Registration for the upcoming virtual series is free and open to the public to attend through Zoom. Please visit this page to learn more about The Institute’s event and stay up to date with up-coming events.
Established in 2008 as a center of advanced research, scholarly, and creative activity in Abu Dhabi, the NYUAD Institute assembles academics, professionals, and leaders from around the world to its academic conferences and public program to discuss research areas and topics of local and global significance.
