Labs and Groups

With artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly moving into everyday life and being woven into our core social institutions like health care, employment, education, criminal justice, AI.Now is working towards a deeper understanding of its effects and exploring ways to harness AI’s power for good. The initiative’s core research areas include rights and liberties, labor and automation, bias and inclusion, and safety and critical infrastructure.

The Algorithms and Foundations Group at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering is composed of researchers interested in applying mathematical and theoretical tools to a variety of disciplines in computer science. We study problems in machine learning, geometry, computational biology, computational mathematics, and beyond.

The AI4CE Lab works to advance fundamental automation and intelligence technologies, to enable their use in civil and mechanical engineering applications.

Levicky Group — The Bio-interfacial Engineering and Diagnostics Group’s research focuses on quantitative characterization of biomolecular interactions, with technological connections to diagnostics for medical and fundamental biology applications. The group seeks to dissect the fundamental equilibrium and kinetic aspects of biomolecular reactions at surfaces and in solution, elucidate the role played by the molecular organization, and apply this understanding to advance bioanalytical technologies.

Professor Dan Sodickson’s research primarily addressed the development of new techniques for biomedical imaging to improve human health. He leads a multidisciplinary team that develops new methods for rapid continuous imaging, taking advantage of recent developments in parallel imaging, compressed sensing, and artificial intelligence. This work extends to clinical applications of MRI, PET and CT.

CATT promotes industry-university collaborative research and development in these areas: wireless and personal communications networks and devices, secure information technologies, and media and network applications/services.

Professor Andreas Hielscher’s team focuses on developing clinically relevant optical tomographic imaging systems. They apply these devices and wearable electronics to the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases, such as breast cancer, arthritis, peripheral artery disease, diabetic foot syndrome, and real-time monitoring of brain activities.

CMML focuses on research related to lightweight highly damage tolerant materials and aims at understanding the fundamental role of porosity in materials. The specialty of the lab is in the area of hollow particle filled composites called syntactic foams and in dynamic characterization of materials. CMML has been working on polymer and metal matrix syntactic foams for civilian and military automotive applications that are exposed to dynamic loading conditions. The other areas of interest to CMML are additive manufacturing and sensors for structural health monitoring.

CCRL conducts research projects on unmanned vehicles, autonomy and navigation, control systems, cyber-security, and machine learning.

Professor Lukasz Witek’s research group performs in vivo and in vitro evaluations of a wide range of (bio)materials that can be used as implants for dental and orthopedic applications. A special focus is on 3D printing of bio-ceramic materials for tissue regeneration.

Our research focuses on computer hardware, including electronic design automation (EDA) and micro-architectural solutions for energy-efficient (En), secure (Su), and reliable (Re) computing.

Researchers at the Fire Research Group work on an online, scenario-based simulation training program for firefighters. ALIVE (Advanced Learning through Integrated Visual Environments) is a decades-long effort to bridge the information gap between research and real-life firefighting.

Using advances in computer vision and machine learning, Professor Guido Gerig’s team develops image analysis methodologies related to segmentation, registration, atlas building, shape analysis, and image statistics. Collaboratively with clinical research, this work is driven by medical problems covering research in autism, Down's syndrome, eye diseases, Huntington's disease, and musculoskeletal disorders.

Professor Sohmyung Ha’s lab aims at advancing the engineering and applications of silicon integrated technology interfacing with biology. This is approached in a variety of forms, ranging from implantable biomedical devices to unobtrusive wearable sensors.

The Integrated Information Systems Laboratory performs research in the areas of wireless communications, information theory and communication theory. Projects conducted with affiliated faculty and students include Cooperative Communications, Joint Source and Channel Coding for Wireless Networks, Information Theoretic Security, Power Efficient Multimedia Communications, and Single Carrier FDMA.

Professor Khalil Ramadi and his team develop innovative approaches for the modulation of neural activity throughout the body. The goal is to come up with novel therapies for neurologic, metabolic, and immune disorders. They combine mechanical, electrical, materials, and bio-engineering toolkits in the design of minimally invasive technologies.

Our goal is to develop new control and game-theoretic tools for designing agile and resilient control for smart energy systems, communication networks, secure cyber-physical systems, and human-in-the-loop systems.

To respond to a changing environment, cells have to express the right genes at the right time. Professor Timothy Lionnet’s lab tries to understand how exactly this is achieved and how robust responses emerge from random molecular events. Getting insights into these biomolecular processes will ultimately provide new tools to tackle, for example, wound healing, cancer, and many other diseases.

We try to understand the fundamental principles for robot locomotion and manipulation that will endow robots with the robustness and adaptability necessary to efficiently and autonomously act in an unknown and changing environment.

The research in the Professor Yong-Ak (Rafael) Song’s group at NYU-AD lies at the interface between biology, physics and engineering. More specifically, their research is focused on applying microfluidics and nanofluidics to broad range of challenges in bioscience and medicine.

We are involved in inventing cutting-edge photonic techniques for detecting individual virus particles. We recently detected single Influenza A virus in-vitro and is pushing its patented Whispering Gallery Mode Biosensor to higher sensitivity in order to detect single HIV virions.

We focus on engineering macromolecules. We aim to predictably design or engineer artificial therapeutics, biocatalysts, scaffolds and cells.

Our research lies at the interface of multifunctional material development and electrochemical engineering. Electrochemical devices are ubiquitous to a broad range of energy conversion technologies and chemical processes.

The team of Professor Shy Shoham works at the interface of neuroscience and engineering, developing and applying modern bidirectional neural interfaces for observing and controlling neural population activity patterns. Their goal is to better understand sensory-motor information coding and to advance medical neurotechnology.

Kevin Chan and his group are developing and applying new methods for noninvasive imaging of neurodegeneration, neurodevelopment, neuroplasticity, and neuroregeneration in people with vision-related diseases and injuries. They study the structural, metabolic, physiological, and functional relationships between the eyes, brain, and behavior with the mission to improve vision.

Our research team studies the physics of electronic materials and their application in building devices and circuits. We are an experimental group with experience in the synthesis of layered materials, nanofabrication of electronic devices, and electrical measurements at both room and cryogenic temperatures.

Research activities in Professor Yao Wang’s group deal with encoding and distributing videos among a large number of users. Of special interest are diverse network access links and applications to biomedical imaging. The lab collaborates extensively with other research groups in wireless communication and networking at the School of Engineering and NYU’s medical school and hospitals.

Professor Smita Rao and her colleagues in the Center of Health and Rehabilitation Research study the effects of exercise in individuals with diabetes, neuropathy, osteoarthritis, and other musculoskeletal conditions. Her research focuses on improving physical therapy and rehabilitation care in these patients.

Riedo Group ­­— Understanding and manipulating solids and liquids at the nanoscale is a matter of continuously growing scientific and technological interest. Complex nanoscale interfaces and materials with reduced dimensionality not only present beautiful and sometimes unexpected new science but they are also relevant for applications in micro/nano-electro-mechanical systems, photonics, micro/nano-fluidics, biology, and nanoelectronics. Our mission is to develop novel scanning probe microscopy-based methods for fabricating the next generation of electronic and biomedical devices, as well as for ground breaking studies of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of novel nanomaterials, including 2D materials and bio-interfaces. Our lab is highly diverse and interdisciplinary with people and collaborations in chemical engineering, physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering.

Our work lies at the intersection of applied physics and electrical engineering. We are passionate about working on transformative research problems in nanoelectronics that will extend the boundaries of electrical engineering beyond its traditional information- and energy-processing domains.

The Secure Systems Laboratory (SSL), under the direction of Professor Justin Cappos, works to find practical and deployable solutions to real-world security threats.

In the laboratory of Professor Ivan Selesnick, PhD, researchers are interested in digital signal processing, sparsity in signal processing, and multi-dimensional wavelet-based signal/image/video processing. They develop new methods for signal filtering, separation, and deconvolution, especially in the area of biomedical imaging.

The work that Professor Samir Taneja and his colleagues are conducting at NYU Langone’s SCPCC and Perlmutter Cancer Center has transformed the field of prostate cancer diagnosis and therapy. Their clinical research focuses on the use of MRI to improve methods of prostate imaging, cancer detection, disease localization, and treatment.

Pinkerton Group — Focuses on developing responsive soft materials for biomedical applications. The group uses tools from chemical and materials engineering, nanotechnology, chemistry and biology to create functional soft materials via scalable synthetic processes and to understand the material behavior in biological systems.

The Governance Lab studies the impact of technology on governing. This "think" and "do" tank partners with public institutions to design, implement and assess innovative ways of using technology to advance more effective and legitimate governing. Our goal is to strengthen the ability of public institutions — including but not limited to governments — and people to work more transparently and collaboratively to make better decisions, solve public problems, and advance social justice.

It combines a series of new concepts, technologies and services to integrate information, vehicles and transportation infrastructure to increase mobility, safety and comfort, and reduce energy waste and pollution.

The Visualization and Data Analytics Research Center at NYU consists of computer scientists who work closely with domain experts to apply the latest advances in computing to problems of critical societal importance, and simultaneously generate hypotheses and methods that new data sources and data types demand.