Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence brings total student body past 900 and attracts 24 new researchers
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Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) welcomed more than 400 new students from over 50 countries at the start of the academic year, bringing its total student body past 900. The incoming cohort comprises over 260 graduate students and 140 undergraduate students, reflecting ongoing academic expansion across the institution's programmes and scientific disciplines.
Graduates from leading global universities form a prominent part of the incoming cohort, with 33 percent of new graduate students holding degrees from the top 100 universities worldwide as ranked by CSRankings. The list includes alumni from institutions such as Harvard, Cambridge, Columbia, Boston University, Brown, NYU, the University of Tokyo, Tsinghua University, UCLA, and the University of Toronto.
In terms of national representation, Emirati students formed the largest single nationality group within the new cohort, with women accounting for more than half of that group, reflecting the growing presence of female researchers and students in advanced computing and artificial intelligence.
The retention of researchers across academic levels highlights growing confidence in the university's research environment, as more than 40 new doctoral students returned to pursue advanced research after completing their master's degrees at MBZUAI. Dezhen Song, associate provost for student affairs and postdoctoral studies and professor of robotics, noted that more than 40 of this year's doctoral students completed their master's studies at the university before choosing to return to pursue advanced degrees.
Student enrollment growth coincided with an expansion of faculty research capacity, with 24 new researchers joining the teaching staff since January, bringing total faculty to 140 and broadening academic and research output across the Department of Biological and Life Sciences and the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics.
The university's faculty includes recipients of international scientific honors, such as the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, alongside fellows of the IEEE, ACM, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the International Society for Computational Biology.
Thamar Solorio, associate provost for faculty excellence and development and professor of natural language processing, noted that MBZUAI attracts researchers across all career stages, from those who have spent decades shaping their fields to scholars who have recently begun contributing to these disciplines and charting their future directions.