MBZUAI welcomes 127 students from over 25 countries

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) welcomed 127 new students for its fall 2022 semester. With the new joiners, the university’s student population now stands at 259.  

Academic seats were competitive with a total of 3668 applications received and an admission rate of 3.73% for its current offerings across three departments, including master’s and doctoral degree programs in computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing. New joiners included 22 doctoral students and 105 master’s students.  

Due to the high quality of faculty and their published work, the university has continued to attract top students from over 25 countries including new places such as Japan, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, and Iraq. 23 students come from the top 100 CS-ranked universities and 32% of the new students are female, in keeping with the university’s mission to encourage more women to continue their post-graduate education and enter academia or research.  

“As a research university, one of our central contributions is in the development of AI talent — growing and sustaining a pipeline of future builders, innovators, thinkers, and leaders in the field,” MBZUAI President, Professor Eric Xing, said. 

Among the newly welcomed students are 30 UAE nationals who, along with their fellow students, will support the development of 4IR (fourth industrial revolution) solutions and the UAE’s National Strategy for AI 2031. Graduates will be equipped with skills and expertise to pursue careers in industries in the UAE and other countries and leading academic institutions. 

“This year’s incoming class is a select group of top students from highly reputable global universities who will join us to grow their academic credentials and develop their entrepreneurial aspirations. Our ambition is that they’ll partake in exceptional research, bolster industrial innovation in the UAE, and contribute to scientific advancements and economic growth for a better world,” Xing said. 

MBZUAI ranks 30 globally in its areas of focus — artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing — a ranking that puts the university ahead of renowned research universities worldwide, such as the University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, and the University of Toronto in North America; Imperial College London, EPFL, and the Max Planck Society in Europe, among others. 

The university seeks to empower a new generation of Al leaders through exceptional education and a unique model of academia focused on AI research and applications alongside academic excellence. Almost three years after its establishment, MBZUAI is recognized for its exceptional research and faculty, who have led or co-led a remarkable number of top, global conferences in 2022 including the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Causal Learning and Reasoning (CLeaR 2022), and the conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI).