Abbas Muhammad is a public policy researcher whose work centers on criminal justice, housing, and tax and budget policy. He is a candidate for the Master in Public Policy at the Rutgers Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, where he holds the Public Policy Dean's Tuition Scholarship, and he earned his Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice summa cum laude from Rutgers University in Newark. His training in legislative policymaking, research design, quantitative methods, and nonprofit management supports both the analytic work of Agard Research Associates and the board's stewardship of it. The questions he pursues, which concern how public budgets are written, how housing policy succeeds or fails, and how the criminal justice system shapes the lives of the people who pass through it, bear directly on the material conditions of American working life.

​

Abbas came to policy research through direct contact with the people it concerns. As a fellow of the Braven Accelerator, he interviewed frontline workers in the food and hospitality industry about the sources of low job satisfaction and proposed a practical change to the way those workers are brought into their jobs. He went on to serve as Event Coordinator of the Braven Campus Club at Rutgers Newark, organizing career workshops on resume writing and leadership for students preparing to enter the labor market. His work sits close to the employment assistance and professional development programs of Agard Research Associates, and it reflects a conviction the organization shares, which is that research on working life is worth little unless it reaches the people whose working lives are at stake. His conversational Arabic further supports engagement with the diverse communities of northern New Jersey.​