‘Second cohort of MBZUAI’s Executive Program has prepared national AI leaders’

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has completed the second edition of its Executive Program (MEP). The second cohort included 43 leaders from various public and private organizations in the UAE, including CEOs, directors general, and executive directors. The graduation ceremony will take place in 2023 at the MBZUAI campus in Abu Dhabi.

The program serves as a springboard for participants to improve their AI skills and knowledge. Participants were required to complete 12 weeks of rigorous coursework, lectures, and collaborative project work. The program covered essential topics such as AI’s past, present, and future; AI, machine learning, and the economy; lingual cognition and intelligence; visual cognition and intelligence; AI ethics and policymaking; and the future of robotics.

The courses were delivered by 11 global AI leaders, including MBZUAI President, Professor Eric Xing; Professor Michael Jordan and Professor Alexei A. Efros of the University of California Berkeley; Professor Raj Reddy and Professor Takeo Kanade of Carnegie Mellon University; and Professor Daniela Rus of MIT.

“His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed has clearly outlined a vision for economic growth and diversification by advancing capacity development in science and technology, to benefit all economic areas and society as a whole. This vision underscores the need to enhance our understanding of AI and its practical application in different industries across both private and public sectors. The second cohort of the MEP has prepared another group of national AI leaders to embrace and apply their new skills and knowledge in their home organizations, fostering innovation and ultimately increasing efficiency and competitiveness” H.E. Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of MBZUAI, said.

As part of a capstone project, participants were tasked with addressing an existing UAE national challenge with an AI research solution. Participants were split into eight groups and worked together to propose solutions to an advisory panel. H.E. Hanan Mansoor Ahli, Director General of the Competitiveness Sector at the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority (FCSA); H.E. Dr. Mohammad Hamad Al-Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity for the UAE Government; Professor Eric Xing, President of MBZUAI; and Professor Preslav Nokav, Acting Deputy Department Chair of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) Department at MBZUAI comprised the advisory panel.

An approach to early cancer detection, an AI-based platform to mitigate fraud, a weather forecasting system, a unified customer-service platform, a Web3-driven financial-management platform, an energy-management platform, a supply-chain prediction platform, and a smart threat-alert system were among the capstone projects.

Visits to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), and the Integrated Transport Centre were part of the program (ITC). Site visits were made to show how AI implementation has progressed in each organization.

In September 2021, the Executive Program was launched to assist the UAE government and business sectors in unlocking the potential of AI through practical applications to national challenges. MBZUAI will celebrate the graduation of its inaugural cohort of 41 participants in March 2022.