Ph.D. in

Machine Learning

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Mode
Full-time

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Credits
60

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Location
On-campus

Overview

The scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to effectively perform a specific task without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. These algorithms are based on mathematical models learned automatically from data, thus allowing machines to intelligently interpret and analyze input data to derive useful knowledge and arrive at important conclusions. Machine learning is heavily used for enterprise applications (e.g., business intelligence and analytics), effective web search, robotics, smart cities, and understanding of the human genome.

overview

Program learning outcomes

Upon completion of the program requirements, the graduate will be able to:

  1. Express a comprehensive and deep understanding of the pipelines at the frontier of machine learning: data, models, algorithmic principles, and empirics
  2. Apply a range of skills and techniques in data pre-processing, exploration, and visualization of data statistics as well as complex algorithmic
    outcomes
  3. Identify the capabilities and limitations of the different forms of learning algorithms and critically analyze, evaluate, and improve the performance of the learning algorithms.
  4. Develop problem-solving skills through independently applying the principles and methods learned in the program to various complex real-world problems.
  5. Compare and contrast statistical properties and performance guarantees including convergence rates (in theory and practice) for different learning algorithms.
  6. Employ and deploy ML-relevant programming tools for a variety of ML problems.
  7. Identify the limitations of existing machine learning algorithms and conceptualize, design, and implement an innovative, sustainable, and
    entrepreneurial solution for a variety of highly complex problems
  8. Initiate, manage, and complete research manuscripts that demonstrate expert self-evaluation and advanced skills in communicating highly complex ideas related to machine learning.
  9. Initiate, manage, and complete multiple complex project reports, and critiques.

Completion requirements

The minimum degree requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy in Machine Learning is 60 credits, distributed as follows:

Core courses Number of courses Credit hours
Core 4 16
Electives 2 8
Internship At least one internship of up to four-months duration must be satisfactorily completed as a graduation requirement 2
Advanced Research Methods 1 2
Research Thesis 1 32

Core courses

The Doctor of Philosophy in Machine Learning is primarily a research-based degree. The purpose of coursework is to equip students with the right skillset, so they can successfully accomplish their research project (thesis). Students are required to take ML801, ML802, ML803, and ML804 as mandatory courses. They can select two electives from the list.

Code Course Title Credit Hours
ML801 Foundations and Advanced Topics in Machine Learning

This course focuses on building foundations and introducing recent advances in machine learning, and on developing skills for performing research to advance the state of the art in machine learning. This course builds upon basic concepts in machine learning and additionally assumes familiarity with fundamental concepts in optimization and math.

4
ML802 Advanced Machine Learning

This course is designed to explore recent breakthroughs in machine learning and provide students with the necessary skills to conduct research and advance the field of machine learning. It will cover highly specialized topics related to large-scale optimization for real-world problems, including Large-Scale Training of Kernel Methods, Sparse Learning, Bilevel Optimization, Black Box Optimization, and Spiking Neural Networks. Prior knowledge of fundamental concepts in machine learning, optimization, and statistics is assumed.

4
ML803 Advanced Probabilistic and Statistical Inference

The study of probabilistic and statistical inference deals with the process of drawing useful conclusions about data populations or scientific truths from uncertain and noisy data. This course will cover some highly specialized topics related to statistical inference and their application to real-world problems. The main topics covered in this course are latent variable learning, kernel methods and approximate probabilistic inference strategies. This course will provide an in-depth treatment to various learning techniques (likelihood, Bayesian and max-margin) and numerous practical complexities (missing data, observed and unobserved confounding, biases) for performing inference.

4
ML804 Advanced Topics in Continuous Optimization

The course covers advanced topics in continuous optimization, such as stochastic gradient descent and its variants, methods that use more than first-order information, primal-dual methods, and methods for composite problems. Participants will read the current state-of-the-art relevant literature and prepare presentations to the other students.

4

Elective courses

Students will select a minimum of two elective courses, with a total of eight (or more) credit hours. The two should be selected based on interest, proposed research thesis, and career aspirations, in consultation with their supervisory panel. l. The elective courses available for the Doctor of Philosophy in Machine Learning are listed in the tables below:

Code Course Title Credit Hours
ML806 Advanced Topics in Reinforcement Learning

The course covers advanced topics in Reinforcement Learning (RL). Participants will read the current state-of-the-art relevant literature and prepare presentations to the other students. Participants will explore how the presented methods work in simplified computing environments to get a deeper understanding of the challenges that are being discussed. Topics discussed include exploration, imitation learning, hierarchical RL, multi agent RL in both competitive and collaborative setting. The course will also explore multitask and transfer learning in RL setting.

4
ML807 Federated Learning

This is a graduate course in a new branch of machine learning: federated learning (FL). In FL, machine learning models are trained on mobile devices with an explicit effort to preserve the privacy of users’ data. FL combines supervised machine learning, privacy, distributed and edge computing, optimization, communication compression, and systems. This is a new and fast-growing field with few theoretical results and early production systems (e.g., Tensor Flow Federated and FedML). This course aims for students to become familiar with the field's key developments and practices, namely optimization methods for FL and techniques to address communication bottlenecks, systems and data heterogeneities, client selection, robustness, fairness, personalization and privacy aspects of FL. The evaluation of the course heavily relies on students' paper presentations and the final project selected by the student.

4
ML808 Advanced Topics in Causality and Machine Learning

In the past decades, interesting advances were made in machine learning, philosophy, and statistics for tackling long-standing causality problems, including how to discover causal knowledge from observational data, known as causal discovery, and how to infer the effect of interventions. Furthermore, it has recently been shown that the causal perspective may facilitate understanding and solving various machine learning / artificial intelligence problems such as transfer learning, semi-supervised learning, out-of-distribution prediction, disentanglement, and adversarial vulnerability. This course is concerned with understanding causality, learning causality from observational data, and using causality to tackle a large class of learning problems. The course will include topics like graphical models, causal inference, causal discovery, and counterfactual reasoning. It will also discuss how we can learn causal representations, perform transfer learning, and understand deep generative models.

4
ML812 Advanced Topics in Algorithms for Big Data

This course is an advanced course on algorithms for big data that involves the use of randomized methods, such as sketching and sampling, to provide dimensionality reduction. It also discussed topics such as Sub-space Embeddings, Low rank Approximation, L1 Regression, Data Streams. The course lies at the intersection of machine learning and statistics.

4
CV801 Advanced Computer Vision

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to Advanced computer vision techniques. The students will develop skills to critique the state-of-the-art computer vision research papers. The course aims at building foundation concepts for modern computer vision as well as developing expertise in several specialized areas of research in computer vision. The following topics will be covered in the course. (i) Deep learning for computer vision (ii) Recent developments in convolutional neural networks and transformers (iii) Advanced techniques in object detection and segmentation (iv) Advanced Vision applications such as medica image segmentation and Remote sensing change detection (v) Development of efficient computer vision architectures (vi) Human centric Vision and (vii) Introduction to Vision Language Models and Diffusion models.

4
CV802 Advanced 3D Computer Vision

The course exercises an in-depth coverage of special topics in 3D computer vision. The students will be able to critique the state-of-the-art methods on multi-view stereo, 3D reconstruction, 3D shape analysis, 3D deep learning and synthesis, students will have to implement papers to accomplish the following goals: (1) reproduce results reported in the papers, and (2) improve the performance of published peer-reviewed works. This course assumes that the students are familiar with the basic concepts of Computer vision, linear algebra and numerical methods.

4
CV803 Advanced Techniques in Visual Object Recognition and Detection

This course provides focused coverage of special topics on visual object recognition (image classification), detection and segmentation. The students will develop skills to critique the state-of-the-art works on visual object recognition, detection and segmentation. Moreover, students will be required to implement papers with the following aims: (1) reproduce results reported in the seminal research papers, and (2) improve the performance of the published works. This course assumes familiarity with fundamental concepts in computer vision and machine learning.

4
CV804 3D Geometry Processing

This course introduces 3D geometry processing, an important field that intersects computer vision, computer graphics, and discrete geometry. This course will cover the mathematical foundations for studying 3D surfaces from a discrete differential geometric standpoint and present the full geometry processing pipeline: from 3D data capture, mesh smoothing, surface reconstruction, parameterization, registration, shape analysis (correspondence, symmetry, matching), data-driven synthesis, interactive manipulation, to 3D printing. This course will offer practical coding exercises to understand basic geometry processing algorithms and exciting project around data capture and geometry processing.

4
CV805 Life-long Learning Agents for Vision

In the field of computer vision, models have typically been trained to perform well on a specific task or dataset by maximizing performance on a validation set. However, this approach only represents a small part of the types of scenarios that are of interest in real-world applications. In recent years, there has been growing interest in exploring different approaches to learning that can be applied in more diverse and dynamic environments. These approaches, which include lifelong learning, continual learning, meta-learning, transfer learning, multi-task learning, and out-of-distribution generalization, aim to enable models to be more robust, efficient, versatile, and well-behaved in non-stationary settings. This graduate course will focus on these emerging learning paradigms and how they can be applied to computer vision and multimodal learning tasks.

4
NLP801 Deep Learning for Language Processing

This course focuses on recent advances in Natural Language Processing and on developing skills for performing research to advance the state of the art in Natural Language Processing.

4
NLP802 Current Topics in Natural Language Processing

This course focuses on recent topics in Natural Language Processing and on developing skills for performing research to advance the state of the art in Natural Language Processing.

4
NLP803 Advanced Speech Processing

This course focuses on developing knowledge about the state of the art in a wide range of Speech Processing tasks, and readiness for performing research to advance the state of the art in these topics.

4
NLP804 Deep Learning for Natural Language Generation

The course introduces students to the emerging topic of natural language generation and prepares them to perform research to advance the state of the art in this research area.

4

Research thesis

The Ph.D. thesis exposes students to cutting-edge and unsolved research problems in the field of machine learning, where they are required to propose new solutions and significantly contribute towards the body of knowledge. Students pursue an independent research study, under the guidance of a supervisory panel, for a period of three to four years.

Code Course Title Credit Hours
RES899 Advanced Research Methods

This course will prepare students to produce professional-quality research and solve a practical research challenge in an organization based on an innovative, sustainable, and entrepreneurial research topic. This course will provide exposure to a variety of special topics, research integrity, ethics, organizational challenges, and needs related to various disciplines. Students will design and implement a research project suitable for conference presentation or journal submission relevant to their field of interest, in addition to peer-reviewing a paper. The instructor, and guest lecturers, as appropriate, will present topics necessary to develop well-rounded researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs in the AI disciplines.

2
ML899 Machine Learning Ph.D. Research Thesis

PhD thesis research exposes students to cutting-edge and unsolved research problems, where they are required to propose new solutions and significantly contribute towards the body of knowledge. Students pursue an independent research study, under the guidance of a supervisory panel, for a period of 3 to 4 years. PhD thesis research helps train graduates to become leaders in their chosen area of research through partly supervised study, eventually transforming them into researchers who can work independently or interdependently to carry out cutting edge research.

32

Internship

The MBZUAl internship with industry is intended to provide the student with hands-on experience, blending practical experiences with academic learning.

Code Course Title Credit Hours
INT899 PhD Internship (up to four months)

PhD Internship (up to four months)

2

Admission criteria

MBZUAI accepts applicants from all nationalities who have a completed degree in a STEM field such as Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or other relevant Science or Engineering major that demonstrates academic distinction in a discipline appropriate for the doctoral degree – either:

  • Bachelor’s degree with a minimum CGPA of 3.5 (on a 4.0 scale) or equivalent, or
  • Master’s degree with a minimum CGPA of 3.2 (on a 4.0 scale) or equivalent

Applicants must provide their completed degree certificates and official transcripts when submitting their application. Senior-level students can apply initially with a copy of their official transcript and expected graduation letter and upon admission must submit the official completed degree certificate and transcript. A degree attestation from UAE MoE (for degrees from the UAE) or Certificate of Recognition from UAE MoE (for degrees acquired outside the UAE) should also be furnished within students’ first semester at MBZUAI.

 

All submitted documents must either be in English, originally, or include official English translations. Additionally, official academic documents must be stamped and signed by the university authorities.

Each applicant must show proof of English language ability by providing valid certificate copies of either of the following:

 

  • TOEFL iBT with a minimum total score of 90
  • IELTS Academic with a minimum overall score of 6.5
  • EmSAT English with a minimum score of 1550

 

TOEFL iBT and IELTS academic certificates are valid for two (2) years from the date of the exam while EmSAT results are valid for eighteen (18) months. Only standard versions (i.e. conducted at physical test centers) of the accepted English language proficiency exams will be considered.

 

Waiver requests from eligible applicants who are citizens (by passport or nationality) of UK, USA, Australia, and New Zealand who completed their studies from K-12 until bachelor’s degree and master’s degree (if applicable) from those same countries will be processed. They need to submit notarized copies of their documents during the application stage and attested documents upon admission. Waiver decisions will be given within seven (7) days after receiving all requirements.

Submission of GRE scores is optional for all applicants but will be considered a plus during the evaluation.

In a 500- to 1000-word essay, explain why you would like to pursue a graduate degree at MBZUAI and include the following information:

 

  • Motivation for applying to the university
  • Personal and academic background and how it makes you suitable for the program you are applying for
  • Experience in completing a diverse range of projects related to artificial intelligence
  • Stand-out achievements, e.g. awards, distinction, etc
  • Goals as a prospective student
  • Preferred career path and plans after graduation
  • Any other details that will support the application

The research statement is a document summarizing the potential research project an applicant is interested in working on and clearly justify the research gap which the applicant would like to fill in during the course of his/her study. It must be presented in the context of currently existing literature and provide an overview of how the applicant aims to investigate the underlying research project as well as predict the expected outcomes. It should mention the relevance and suitability of the applicant’s background and experience to the project and highlight the project’s scientific and commercial significance. The research statement should include the following details:

 

  • Title
  • Problem definition
  • Literature review
  • Proposed research/methods/solution (optional)
  • Study timeline (a table, figure or a small paragraph presenting your plans for the four years in the Ph.D. program)
  • List of references

 

Applicants are expected to write the research statement independently. MBZUAI faculty will NOT help write it for the purpose of the application. The MBZUAI Admission Committee will review the submitted document and use it as one of the measures to gauge and assess applicants’ skills.

Applicants will be required to nominate referees who can recommend their application. Ph.D. applicants should have a minimum of three (3) referees wherein at least one was a previous course instructor or faculty/research advisor and the others were current or previous work supervisors.

 

To avoid issues and delays in the provision of the recommendation, applicants have to inform their referees of their nomination beforehand and provide the latter’s accurate information in the online application portal. Automated notifications will be sent out to the referees upon application submission.

All applicants with complete files, including the required number of recommendations, will be invited to participate in an online screening exam to assess their knowledge and skills. Completion of the exam is not mandatory but highly encouraged as it would provide additional information to the evaluation committee. Waiving the exam is only recommended for those students who can provide strong evidence of their research capability, subject matter expertise, and technical skills.

 

Exam Topics 

 

MathCalculus, probability theory, linear algebra, trigonometry and optimization

 

Machine learning: Machine learning algorithms and concepts such as linear regression, decision trees, loss functions, support vector machines, classification, regression, clustering, convolutional neural networks, dimensionality reduction, neural networks and unsupervised learning

 

Programming: Knowledge surrounding specific programming concepts and principles such as algorithms, data structures, logic, OOP, and recursion as well as language–specific knowledge of Python

 

Applicants are highly encouraged to complete the following online courses to further improve their qualifications :

 

The exam instructions are available here

A select number of applicants may be invited to an interview with faculty as part of the screening process. The time and instructions for this will be communicated to applicants on timely bases.

Study plan

A typical study plan is as follows:

Semester 1

ML801 Foundations and Advanced Topics in Machine Learning
ML802 Advanced Machined Learning
+ 1 elective

Semester 2

ML803 Advanced Probabilistic and Statistical Inference
ML804 Advanced Topics in Continuous Optimization
+ 1 elective

Summer

INT899 Internship (up to four months)

Semester 3

ML899 Ph.D. Research Thesis
RES899 Research Training

Semester 4

ML899 Ph.D. Research Thesis

Semester 5

ML899 Ph.D. Research Thesis

Semester 6

ML899 Ph.D. Research Thesis

Semester 7

ML899 Ph.D. Research Thesis

Semester 8

ML899 Ph.D. Research Thesis

Career prospects

AI is permeating every industry. At recent employer engagement events at MBZUAI, there has been representation from multiples sectors including (but not limited to):

  • Aviation, consultancy, education, energy, finance, government entities, healthcare, media, oil and gas, security and defense, research institutes, retail, telecommunications, transportation and logistics, and startups.

Recent job opportunities advertised via the MBZUAI Student Careers Portal include (but not limited to):

  • AI solution architect, AI solution engineer, algorithmic engineer, data analyst, data engineer, data scientist, data strategy consultant, full stack software engineer, full stack web developer, predictive analytics researcher, and senior data scientist – consultant.

Other career opportunities could include (but not limited to):

  • Applied scientist, analytics engineer, augmented/virtual reality, autonomous cars, biometrics and forensics, chief data officer, data platform leadership, data journalist, data and AI technical sales specialist, growth analytics / engineers, manager: AI and cloud services planning, machine learning engineers, product manager: AI and data analytics, product data scientist, product analyst, remote sensing, research assistants, security and surveillance, senior software engineer, and
    VP data.

Meet the faculty

...

Eric Xing

President and University Professor

...

Kun Zhang

Acting Chair of Machine Learning, Professor of Machine Learning, and Director of Center for Integrative Artificial Intelligence (CIAI)

...

Martin Takáč

Deputy Department Chair of Machine Learning, and Associate Professor of Machine Learning

...

Mohsen Guizani

Professor of Machine Learning

...

Le Song

Professor of Machine Learning

...

Bin Gu

Assistant Professor of Machine Learning

...

Qirong Ho

Assistant Professor of Machine Learning

...

Samuel Horváth

Assistant Professor of Machine Learning

...

Zhiqiang Xu

Assistant Professor of Machine Learning

...

Eric Moulines

Adjunct Professor of Machine Learning

...

Pengtao Xie

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Machine Learning

Disclaimer: Subject to change.

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