Matthew Saleh

Matt is a Senior Research Associate at the Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability (YTI). Matt's research focuses on career pathways for youth with disabilities and barriers to employment, such as justice involvement. At Cornell, Matt teaches undergraduate courses in disability studies and a course in the Government Department on mass incarceration in the United States.

Matt is Principal Investigator (PI) on the US Department of Health & Human Services funded project Improving VR Outcomes for Out-of-School Youth Involved in the Justice and/or Foster Care Systems and PI on a pilot program called Pro Se: Empowering Justice-Involved Youth and Young Adults through Speech, Debate, and Self-Advocacy Training, which provides a virtual certificate program in “Speech and Debate” to justice-involved youth, offered by Cornell undergraduate students.

Matt is faculty advisor for the Cornell Undergraduate Mock Trial Association and a 2021 recipient of the Cornell ILR Engaged Learning Teaching Award, and he was a 2015–16 Fulbright Scholar in Barbados through the US Department of State.