MBZUAI welcomes the world to Abu Dhabi as COLING 2025 opens

One of the world’s premier conferences for natural language processing and computational linguistics has launched in Abu Dhabi, with MBZUAI hosting more than 1,500 attendees from around the world as local organizers. 

The 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2025) is taking place at the ADNEC Center from 18-24 January – the first time it is being held in the Middle East – featuring paper presentations, demonstrations, keynote speeches, workshops, tutorials and events led by and featuring some of the field’s leading thinkers and researchers. 

“COLING 2025 brings together the brightest minds in AI and Computational Linguistics, creating an unparalleled opportunity for dialogue and innovation,” says Preslav Nakov, Department Chair and Professor of NLP at MBZUAI, and chair of the local organizing committee. 

“As language technology continues to redefine the way humans interact with machines, we are looking forward to exploring how these advancements can be leveraged to solve regional and global challenges – from healthcare and education to business and beyond.” 

Established in 1965, the biennial conference attracts participants from top-ranked research centers as well as emerging countries, welcoming contributions from not only academic institutions, but industrial research departments such as tech start-ups. 

Led by Nakov, the local organizing committee includes MBZUAI faculty Alham Fikri Aji; Yova Kementchedjhieva; Ekaterina Kochmar; Monojit Choudhury; Ahmed Dabbagh; head of NLP research engagement, Teresa Lynn; and Nizar Habash of New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). 

At the forefront of research 

This year, COLING received 2,530 direct paper submissions, and 193 papers committed via the ACL Rolling Review (ARR) route, with a total of 853 accepted to be part of the main conference. Of that number, 22 have come from MBZUAI students and faculty, including research that focuses on fact-checking systems, evaluation biases, cross-cultural content, and more. 

Some of the standout papers from MBZUAI include:  

• Exploring the Limitations of Detecting Machine Generated Text. 
• OpenFactCheck: Building, Benchmarking Customized Fact-Checking Systems and Evaluating the Factuality of Claims and LLMs. 
• Loki: An Open-Source Tool for Fact Verification. 
• What Makes Cryptic Crosswords Challenging for LLMs? 
• The Gaps between Fine Tuning and In-context Learning in Bias Evaluation and Debiasing. 
• Decoding Echo Chambers: LLM-Powered Simulations Revealing Polarization in Social Networks. 
• Style Over Substance: Evaluation Biases for Large Language Models. 
• CULTURALLY YOURS: A Reading Assistant for Cross-Cultural Content. 

The event also includes 22 workshops, nine tutorials, and a new two-day co-located event, the first ever Winter School on Arabic Natural Language Processing.  

The Winter School took place on 18-19 January, before the main conference opened, and was designed to advance knowledge and skills in Arabic NLP research and development, and foster interdisciplinary exchange and networking among students, academics, and industry professionals. 

The first day of the Winter School was held at the MBZUAI campus in Masdar City, with the second day moving to ADNEC. Participants were given an introduction to Arabic NLP tutorial; panels on starting and excelling in Arabic NLP, and building and benchmarking Arabic LLMs; hands-on sessions with Camel tools and aiXplain tools; mentoring sessions; and the HALA! Hackathon for Arabic Language by aiXplain. 

This year’s COLING program also features three keynote speakers, including: Katrin Erk, Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin; Emmanuel Dupoux, Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris; and Parth Talukdar, researcher at Google DeepMind India – where he leads the Languages group – and faculty member at IISc Bangalore. 

Abu Dhabi’s growing reputation 

Abu Dhabi is no stranger to hosting leading AI conferences. In December last year the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2024) was held in the Emirate, with MBZUAI professors Fakhri Karray, Kun Zhang and Maxim Panov on the organizing committee. The 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2022) — organized by MBZUAI and NYUAD — also took place in Abu Dhabi, as did the 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): the leading global robotics event. 

“As the local organizer of COLING 2025, MBZUAI is glad to see this prestigious conference being held in the MENA region for the first time,” says Nakov. “This is a notable milestone for the region, and showcases Abu Dhabi’s growing leadership in AI, especially in NLP. 

“Abu Dhabi is home of MBZUAI’s Institute of Foundation Models, which has developed Jais, the world’s leading open Arabic-centric foundation and instruction-tuned LLM, in collaboration with G42 and Cerebras; K2, a 65B model optimized for reasoning; Nanda, the world’s best open Hindi model; and LLM360, the first truly open LLM. It is also home of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), which has developed the Falcon family of LLMs. 

“Abu Dhabi offers a blend of tradition and modernity, and reflects the values of connectivity, learning, and exploration – values that resonate deeply with our scientific community. Our aim is to create an environment where attendees can engage in meaningful discussions, form new collaborations, and experience the warmth of Emirati hospitality. We are proud to showcase our region’s dedication to technology and language innovation through the conference program.” 

In 2024, the UAE was ranked fifth in the Global AI Power Rankings, reinforcing Abu Dhabi’s status as a draw for AI talent. MBZUAI is also recognized as one of the world’s top 25 universities for its specializations in AI, computer vision, machine learning, NLP and robotics, and is one of the top 85 computer science universities, according to CSRankings. 

COLING 2025 is supported by the Abu Dhabi Convention and Exhibition Bureau (ADCEB), part of the Department of Tourism and Culture – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi).