MBZUAI puts Abu Dhabi on the global AI conferences map

When the 2024 edition of the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) opened in Abu Dhabi this week, it confirmed the emirate’s status as one of the leading destinations for AI conferences around the world. 

The global conference, which has been held in cities such as Beijing, Seoul, Auckland and Dallas, is being hosted in Abu Dhabi for the first time, with an array of leading AI thinkers, pioneers and educators from the UAE making up the organizing committee. 

And Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) is well represented, with three faculty members in key positions; showcasing the University’s talent on the international stage. 

Professor of Machine Learning, Fakhri Karray, is serving as honorary co-chair, while Kun Zhang, Acting Chair of Machine Learning, Professor of Machine Learning, and Director of Center for Integrative Artificial Intelligence (CIAI), is program committee co-chair. Maxim Panov, Assistant Professor of Machine Learning, is local arrangement co-chair. 

All highly respected AI leaders in their field, their presence at ICDM is a reminder of the role MBZUAI has played in bringing renowned figures to Abu Dhabi; helping to turn the emirate into a magnet for top AI talent.  

ICDM is the latest in a series of international conferences hosted by Abu Dhabi, including the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in October this year, and the forthcoming International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING) which takes place in January 2025. COLING features a team of seven MBZUAI faculty members on the organizing committee, highlighting the University’s involvement in such events, with numerous faculty members having led or chaired past high-profile conferences. These have included Provost and Professor of Natural Language processing, Timothy Baldwin, who delivered the presidential keynote address at the 60th annual meeting of the ACL, and Professor of Machine Learning Le Song, who served as Program Chair at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) conference. 

Abu Dhabi in the spotlight 

Having been included in the organizing committee of ICDM 2024, Karray, Zhang and Panov are unanimous in their belief that the conference will reinforce Abu Dhabi’s and MBZUAI’s reputation as advancing AI innovation.

“The conference is a major technical event in the field of data mining and being involved – along with my MBZUAI colleagues – highlights the importance given to MBZUAI in organizing such prominent events,” Karray says. “What’s more, holding the conference in Abu Dhabi will encourage organizers or other major technical events to hold them in this area.” 

Zhang adds: “Hosting ICDM 2024 in Abu Dhabi presents an excellent opportunity to highlight MBZUAI’s remarkable achievements in AI and machine learning, as well as Abu Dhabi’s rich culture. This can naturally further improve the visibility of MBZUAI in the data mining community and help attract top talent for collaboration.”  

And Panov says, “Hosting major conferences like ICDM in the UAE not only strengthens the local data mining and AI communities but also enhances global recognition of the UAE as an emerging hub for scientific excellence. I am confident that ICDM 2024 will be a remarkable success, providing an inspiring platform for fruitful scientific discussions and collaborations.” 

The UAE’s recent ranking as fifth in the Stanford Global AI Power Rankings 2024 reinforces Abu Dhabi’s status as a draw for AI talent, while the quality of its faculty has helped MBZUAI be recognized as one of the world’s top 20 universities for its specializations in AI, CV, ML, NLP, and robotics, and top 100 universities in computer science universities, according to CSRankings.