MBZUAI admits 101 graduate students to its first cohort ahead of 2021 start

The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi said on September 9, 2020, that it had admitted 101 graduate students to its inaugural class. The university, based in Masdar City, reported receiving more than 2,200 applications and scheduled its first semester to begin on January 10, 2021.

According to the university, 82 of the admitted students joined Master of Science programs and 19 joined doctoral programs, with both levels offered in computer vision and machine learning. The class was drawn from more than 30 countries. About 21 percent of students came from the United Arab Emirates, 13 percent from elsewhere in the Middle East, 38 percent from Asia, 21 percent from Africa, and roughly 10 percent from the Americas and Europe. Women accounted for 30 percent of those admitted.

MBZUAI said it had originally planned to enroll 50 students in its first intake and enlarged the class because of the volume of applications it received. The institution opened as a graduate-level university focused on artificial intelligence, offering only master's and doctoral degrees in its first intake, and the arrival of this cohort marked the start of its teaching activity in Abu Dhabi.