####First Year Writing Seminar Multilingual Panel

On Sunday, Feb. 12, a panel on language and multilingualism was held for all First Year Writing Seminar students. Professors Nizar Habash, Diogo Almeida and Toral Gajarawala addressed questions about language development and usage from the points of view of Computer Science, Psychology and Comparative Literature.

The scholars addressed the problems that non-native English speakers might come across while studying at an American university; these included limited everyday vocabulary in English and limited professional vocabulary in their mother tongue. The professors leading the First Year Writing Seminars kept in mind not to force the students to give up on their dialect and style of expression while instructing them how to properly write in academic English.

####Red Baraat, Dengue Fever and Dakhabrakha

On Friday, Feb. 17, due to bad weather conditions, the NYUAD Arts Center’s Barzakh Festival of world music had to be moved indoors to the Red Theater.

The show started with Red Baraat playing the tunes of Indian Bhangra mixed with deep-hearted jazz, inviting the audience to join their performance in dance and rhythmic applause. The second performers, Dengue Fever, put on a loud and upbeat show in the style of Cambodian Rock. The Ukrainian ethno-band Dakhabrakha ended the night by putting on a show with traditional costumography, brilliant theatrics and harmonies.

####HackNYU

From 12 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 18 until 12 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 19, the three NYU campuses hosted a large-scale hackathon. NYU Abu Dhabi students set up in the Unix Lab and connected, via a live stream, with peers from NYU New York and NYU Shanghai. Students were given the task of solving pressing problems related to one of four tracks: healthcare, assistive technology, education and sustainability. Developed projects will be judged by a professional panel in New York.

Daniel Watson, Class of 2020, is one of the students who spent his weekend developing a mobile app that will help the NYUAD community, hungry@nyuad. “The idea is that people searching to order food can find others that want to order, especially if the restaurant requires a minimum amount of money to do a delivery,” said Daniel. “The workshops and the people were amazing and I have learned a lot, but it would have been better to have more people participating. It was only about 10 people that stayed for the whole thing,” he added.