Serendipity Undergraduate Research Fellowships

Study Away Research Opportunities

Research Across NYU’s Global Network – New York | Abu Dhabi | Shanghai

Are you studying away at NYU New York, Abu Dhabi, or Shanghai during the fall semester? Elevate your academic experience with the Serendipity Undergraduate Research Fellowship! Work on cutting-edge research projects alongside leading faculty from NYU’s global campuses.

Eligibility

  • Applicants must:
    - Be an undergraduate student enrolled at NYU New York, NYU Abu Dhabi, or NYU Shanghai.
    - Be studying away at one of the three NYU campuses during the Fall 2026 semester.
    - Meet any project-specific qualifications listed in the project descriptions (where applicable). While prior research experience or relevant coursework is preferred, students from diverse academic backgrounds are encouraged to apply.
  • Fellowships typically begin at the start of the fall semester (around early September), although the exact start date, end date, and duration will be determined in consultation with the faculty mentor. During the semester, fellows may work up to 8 hours per week. Applicants must not undertake another internship, job, or research position during the fellowship period.

Application Process

To apply, please complete the Serendipity Undergraduate Research Fellowship Application Form.

Please note that each applicant may apply to only one research project. We encourage you to review all project descriptions carefully and select the opportunity that best aligns with your academic interests and experience.

As part of your application, you will be asked to provide:

  • Curriculum Vitae (CV)
  • An official or unofficial academic transcript
  • Statement of Interest (200 – 300 words)

Application Deadline

August 15, 2026, 11:59 pm China Standard Time. 

Review Process

Applications are reviewed by the project faculty on a rolling basis. Qualified applicants may be contacted for additional information or an interview. Early applications are strongly encouraged. If you have not been contacted by September 20, 2026, it means that we are unfortunately unable to move forward with your application.

Stipend

A stipend will be provided to fellows. The hourly rate will be determined by the faculty mentor, depending on the project and available funding.

Research Projects & Faculty Mentors

The Good, the Bad, and the Undecided: Governance of Adversarial Abusive Agents in Multi-Agent Systems

  • Location NYU New York, NYU Abu Dhabi & NYU Shanghai
  • Member Rosanna Bellini, Helena Rong, Hua Shen, Sandra Siby

Explores governance mechanisms for detecting, managing, and mitigating adversarial and abusive behaviors in multi-agent systems.

An Alternative LLM Architecture: Diffusion Large Language Models

  • Location NYU Abu Dhabi & NYU Shanghai
  • Member Jack B. Du, Gottfried Haider, Yucheng Lu, Muhammad Shafique, Chen Zhao

Explores diffusion-based architectures as an alternative paradigm to autoregressive large language models.

Optimizing Retail Ecosystems under Dynamic Adaptation

  • Location NYU New York, NYU Abu Dhabi & NYU Shanghai
  • Member Kimberly Villalobos Carballo, Saif Eddin Jabari, Zhikun Lu, Joline Uichanco, Takahiro Yabe

Explores strategies for optimizing retail ecosystems in dynamically changing environments.

Characterizing the Values and Norms in Multi-Agent Human-AI Collaboration to Resolve Social Dilemma

  • Location NYU New York, NYU Abu Dhabi & NYU Shanghai
  • Member Ben Rosche, Hanan Salam, Hua Shen, Vedant Das Swain

Examines how values and social norms influence decision-making in multi-agent human–AI collaboration for resolving social dilemmas.

Optimal Clean Transportation Networks for Cities

  • Location NYU New York, Abu Dhabi & Shanghai
  • Member Zhibin Chen, Dharik Mallapragada, Miguel Modestino, Muhammad Shafique, Zhaonan Wang

AI-powered solutions for sustainable urban transportation.

Adaptive AI for Predicting Urban Dynamics under Climate Change

  • Location NYU New York, Abu Dhabi & Shanghai
  • Member Zhibin Chen, ChengHe Guan, Saif Eddin Jabari, Zhaonan Wang, Takahiro Yabe

Developing AI models to analyze urban dynamics & improve city resilience.

Mechanism Design for Climate Finance: Machine Learning & Game-Theoretic Approach

  • Location NYU New York & Shanghai
  • Member Mathieu Laurière, Yuki Miura, Eugene Vinitsky, Renyuan Xu

Applying AI & game theory to support global climate finance initiatives.

LoVURe: Long Video Understanding & Reasoning for Robot-Assisted Industries

  • Location NYU New York, Abu Dhabi & Shanghai
  • Member Yi Fang, Chen Feng, Li Guo, Saif Eddin Jabari, Hanan Salam, Muhammad Shafique, Farah Shamout, Qi Sun, Qiaoyu Tan, Shengjie Wang, Gene Wen, Hongyi Wen, Jing Zhang, Sai Qian Zhang

Advancing AI for video analysis in manufacturing, healthcare & education.

LLMs for Coding/Robotics

  • Location NYU New York, Abu Dhabi & Shanghai
  • Member Siddharth Garg, Ramesh Karri, Riyadh Baghdadi, Hanan Salam, Muhammad Shafique, Yasir Zaki, Wilson Tam, Gene Wen, Chen Zhao

Unified Trustworthy Multimodal Foundation Model for Radiology

  • Location NYU New York, Abu Dhabi & Shanghai
  • Member Chinmay Hegde, Farah Shamout, Chen Zhao

 

About Serendipity

Launched in December 2024, the Serendipity Research Confluence is an interdisciplinary initiative that connects faculty across NYU’s global campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai to explore emerging topics in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The inaugural event took place at NYU Abu Dhabi and brought together more than 40 professors for two days of focused discussions on subjects such as large language models, code generation, climate change, computational sociology and urban health.

To learn more about the inaugural event, read the full news story here.