MBZUAI to celebrate inaugural commencement

MBZUAI today hosted a pre-commencement gowning walk and celebration festival featuring special guest Anas Bukhash on its Abu Dhabi campus as a prelude to its inaugural commencement on January 30, 2023.

The first graduating class will see 52 students from 24 countries earn masters’ degrees in two specialist areas of artificial intelligence – computer vision and machine learning.

The event is a major milestone for the university, which was officially licensed in March 2020 by the Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA) of the Ministry of Education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In just two years, MBZUAI has risen into the top 25 of institutions globally in the CSRankings in AI, machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision – ahead of UCLA, EPFL and many others. The university has already reached 126 in the global CSRankings and sits atop the MENA regional rankings.

Most of the students hail from top universities, including National University of Singapore, Arizona State University, and North Carolina State University, and were selected from among thousands of applicants, ensuring only the highest caliber students joined MBZUAI.

The MBZUAI Class of 2022 has thrived under the guidance of the university’s faculty, which consists of 45 renowned AI experts led by Eric Xing, President and University Professor. More than half of the university’s faculty have come to Abu Dhabi from the world’s top 100 AI institutions.

In total, the university boasts more than 250 master’s and Ph.D. students from more than 40 countries — the Emirates being the single largest student population. In 2022 alone, students and faculty produced 390 scholarly publications – 277 of which have featured in top conferences and journals.

Class of 2022 students demonstrated their aptitude throughout the duration of the program, with many winning a string of first places in competitions, including the Cisco Sustainability Challenge, Siemens Women in AI Hackathon, the RTA Smart Mobility Hackathon in Expo Dubai, and Dubai Roads and Transport Authority’s (RTA) Transport Hackathon.

In keeping with the university’s commitment to supporting women in technology, 18 of this year’s graduates – 35% of the graduating class – are female. These graduates are set to become innovators and future leaders in the UAE and beyond including nine of them who will go on to pursue a Ph.D.