Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

04/06/2026

At CVPR 2026, MBZUAI researchers will present work addressing core challenges in computer vision and multimodal AI: how models reason over long videos, how systems generalise with limited labels, how AI agents can support remote sensing, and how the field should approach watermarking in generative media.

From the many papers accepted, we're spotlighting a selection of oral and highlight papers which focus on visual reasoning, trustworthy media, domain adaptation, remote sensing, and efficient foundation-model methods.

04/06/2026

Genetics explains only a fraction of why people get sick. Environment, lifestyle, and the epigenome explain far more. And unlike DNA, those factors can change.
A new framework published in Nature Genetics sets out how the UAE is uniquely positioned to turn that insight into population-scale disease prevention.

The paper was co-authored by MBZUAI's:
Professor Eran Segal - Dean of the Biological and Life Sciences Division, and Professor of Computational Biology;
Professor Eduardo Beltrame - Assistant Professor of Computational Biology;
Professor Shahrukh Hashmi- Adjunct Professor of Personalized Medicine, and Director of Research, Department of Health Abu Dhabi (DoH);
Professor Andrew Feinberg - Visiting Scholar, MBZUAI, Director of the Center for Epigenetics, Chief of the Division of Molecular Medicine in the Department of Medicine, and the King Fahd Professor of Medicine, Oncology, Molecular Biology, and Genetics in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Read more 👉 https://mbzuai.ac.ae/news/how-population-scale-epigenetics-could-transform-healthcare-in-the-uae/

Link to paper here 👉 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-026-02630-x.epdf?sharing_token=5R1MYee2S7tlE8VX2-dlU9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PVd6ngVdcJ7rYjlIc6xgP7_RMsBCZZ_cyTPDJFkvgpe7bGT9Op9SdIsDe1GCJsFLTJK7h7wRvi8JUu5C0KBq4qyRbF94KFoy-wb-bLjvavF5umMGCOkt_zlQBeTN36YE0%3D

29/05/2026

MBZUAI President and University Professor Eric Xing is speaking today at 1:45 PM EST at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Symposium.
His talk, “A World Model of the Virtual Cell,” is part of the “Scientific Agents and Multimodal Models” session and introduces a new AI architecture for biological simulation, and the team’s first implementation of a Virtual Cell World Model (VCWM).

Join via Zoom (registration required): https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1aC3ZXs8TM-GUdP7JiNJAg

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: 90th Symposium: AI in Biology . After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

28/05/2026

MBZUAI’s first-ever PhD graduate didn’t leave. He stayed and got to work.
Since graduating in 2024, Numan Saeed has been at MBZUAI as a Research Scientist, collaborating with hospitals across the UAE, including Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and Burjeel, to build the datasets and models needed to bring AI into real clinical settings.

His approach starts with a simple shift: stop deciding what problems to solve, and start asking clinicians what they actually need.

His work spans tumor segmentation, cancer prognosis, fetal ultrasound, and a new Cancer Foundation Model backed by a Department of Health grant, all built on locally generated data with radiologists in the loop.

The goal is not to replace clinicians. It is to give them better tools.

“If the clinician and the AI models are working together and addressing the problem as a team, then you’re going to have a much better chance of solving real problems.”

Read Numan’s story: https://mbzuai.ac.ae/news/alumni-spotlight-building-medical-ai-from-the-ground-up/

26/05/2026

تتمنى جامعة محمد بن زايد للذكاء الاصطناعي لكم ولأحبائكم عيد أضحى مبارك. كل عام وأنتم بخير!✨

MBZUAI wishes you and your loved ones a blessed Eid Al-Adha. ✨

25/05/2026

What if language models are not just text generators, but cultural archives?

New research from MBZUAI and the Technical University of Darmstadt finds that large language models encode cultural commonsense: not just facts, but the chains of actions and expectations that shape everyday life across different societies.

The catch? Models tend to express that knowledge more reliably in English than in the native language of the culture itself.

The team tested their approach across five countries: China, Indonesia, Japan, England, and Egypt. They found that adding structured cultural knowledge helped smaller models perform better on cultural reasoning tasks.

It is not a complete fix, but it is a step toward AI systems that can navigate different social contexts without flattening them.

Research by Junior Cedric Tonga, Chen Cecilia Liu, Iryna Gurevych, and Fajri Koto.

Read more: https://mbzuai.ac.ae/news/ai-models-are-becoming-cultural-archives/

22/05/2026

Richard Morton, Vice President and Executive Director of the Institute of Foundation Models, took the stage at the Abu Dhabi AI Native Summit 1.0 this week.

Highlights from his talk include:

1. The UAE isn’t just deploying AI — it’s building frontier models from scratch. MBZUAI sits alongside leading global tech organizations capable of this.
2. Sovereignty is the overlooked variable. For governments embedding AI into core processes, open, transparent models aren’t a nice-to-have; they’re a must-do. K2 and JAIS are fully open-source and UAE-built for exactly this reason.
3. Agentic AI is happening now. End-to-end procurement, unified citizen services, executive workflows are all possible without human intervention. The challenge isn’t the technology; it’s knowing where to pilot it first.
4. And world models — simulating physical reality for robotics and autonomous systems — are the next big frontier, with MBZUAI among only three entities globally working at this level.

Exciting things ahead for and from the UAE. 🇦🇪

For more info, visit: https://bit.ly/4nIQxMQ

22/05/2026

استقبلت جامعة محمد بن زايد للذكاء الاصطناعي دفعة جديدة في برنامج الماجستير في الذكاء الاصطناعي التطبيقي من خلال بعثات محمد بن راشد الحكومية.

يُعد البرنامج الأول من نوعه في دولة الإمارات، ويهدف إلى تزويد الكوادر الحكومية الإماراتية بمهارات متقدمة في مجال الذكاء الاصطناعي، لتسريع تبنيه في الجهات الحكومية ودعم استراتيجية الإمارات للذكاء الاصطناعي 2031.

يشمل البرنامج مجموعة من المحاور التخصصية مثل الذكاء الاصطناعي التوليدي والتعلم العميق، بالإضافة إلى الروبوتات والذكاء الاصطناعي الموثوق وأنظمة المدن الذكية. يجمع بين التميز الأكاديمي والتطبيق العملي، مما يهيئ خريجيه لقيادة التحول في استخدام الذكاء الاصطناعي في القطاع الحكومي بدولة الإمارات.

MBZUAI welcomes a new cohort to the Master of Applied Artificial Intelligence (MAAI) program through the Mohammed bin Rashid Government Scholarships.

This UAE-first program will equip Emirati government professionals with advanced, practical AI skills to accelerate AI adoption across government entities and support the UAE Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2031.

From generative AI and applied deep learning to robotics, trustworthy AI, and smart city systems, the program combines academic excellence with real-world application, preparing graduates to lead AI transformation across the UAE public sector.
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20/05/2026

Professor Mladen Kolar has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). The IMS Fellowship recognizes exceptional research and professional achievements that contribute to the fields of statistics and probability.

Kolar is Visiting Professor and Department Chair of Statistics and Data Science at MBZUAI and Professor of Data Science and Operations at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. His research focuses on developing statistical and machine learning models for scientific discovery from high-dimensional, noisy data. His work combines efficient optimization techniques with theoretically grounded methods to create models that not only predict but also reveal underlying data-generating mechanisms. His approach prioritizes interpretability, making it valuable across domains such as the life sciences and social sciences.

Kolar was previously awarded the 2024 Junior Leo Breiman Award from the Statistical Learning and Data Science Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA). He currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Machine Learning Research, the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. He also served the Annals of Statistics and the New England Journal of Statistics in Data Science.

The IMS will honor Kolar and the other new Fellows at the Institute’s Annual Meeting, being held 6–9 July 2026 in Salzburg, Austria.

For more information, visit the IMS website: https://imstat.org/2026/05/19/congratulations-to-the-2026-class-of-ims-fellows/

19/05/2026

Still thinking about your summer plans? 👀
 
NextGen Summer Program applications are open until May 31.
 
If you’re in Grade 9–10 and curious about AI, coding, and emerging tech, this is your chance to spend two weeks on campus exploring what the future looks like.
 
📍 MBZUAI Campus, Abu Dhabi
📅 6–17 July 2026
 
Link in bio to apply.