ABU DHABI (ALETIHAD)
Thirty two executives from regional and global organisations have graduated from an intensive six-day programme at Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence where they gained essential knowledge of AI strategy and implementation that they will use to drive transformation within their companies.
The MBZUAI Executive Program Accelerated (MEP-A) is an expedited version of the university’s 16-week MEP course and is designed to provide a unique understanding of AI, giving leaders from a broad range of organisations and locations access to MBZUAI’s world-class facilities and faculty from institutions including MBZUAI, Columbia and Berkeley.
The inaugural programme gave participants critical tools to help them support and cultivate AI integration and innovation within their organisations, including how to apply AI to the real world, and its implications in business and policymaking. They also gained access to a community of senior business and government leaders and AI experts from around the world, and received insights into best practice, strategic implementation, ethics and the latest advancements in AI technology.
To bridge their learning into implementation and practical uses, the cohort gained hands-on experience and witnessed AI in action during site visits to ADNOC, Abu Dhabi Ports Group, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work and Dubai Future Foundation and Dubai Future Labs.
The debut MEP-A cohort consisted of 32 executives from seven countries, 26 of whom were from the UAE’s public and private sector such as Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Mubadala, Dubai Water & Electricity Authority, Department of Government Enablement, Abu Dhabi Ports, Department of Finance etc. The six international participants came from Saudi Arabia, UK, US and Phillipines. Almost half (14) of the cohort were women.
Professor Timothy Baldwin, Provost and Professor of Natural Language Processing at MBZUAI, said: “MEP-A builds on the success of MEP by bringing some of the most important insights and learnings from the full course to a broader audience of global executives.
“Feedback from the MEP-A graduates has been excellent, telling us that they found the course extremely valuable, particularly the site visits, and that they are confident they can adapt the learnings to their own organisations. Importantly, their newfound knowledge will help them implement AI in a safe and ethical manner.
“The graduates' approach to the programme has also benefitted us at MBZUAI, offering new perspectives that will be fed back into future editions of MEP-A.”
The programme featured a line-up of AI experts as instructors and speakers, including MBZUAI President and Professor, Eric Xing, Professor Michael Jordan of UC Berkeley, Professor Sheena Iyengar of Colombia University. Also from MBZUAI were Professor Sami Haddadin, Professor Elizabeth Churchill, and Professor Ian Reid alongside other experts.
MBZUAI was established in 2019 and is recognised as one of the world's top 100 universities across all of computer science and is ranked in the top 15 globally across AI, computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and robotics (CSRankings).