Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence Launches Institute for Foundational Models
Abu Dhabi, The Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence has announced the establishment of the Institute for Foundational Models, a pioneering institution aimed at advancing, comprehending, utilizing, and managing advanced foundational models in the field of artificial intelligence.
The institute's foundation was prompted by the growing demand for transformative artificial intelligence development. It seeks to bolster the United Arab Emirates' position as a leading force in generative artificial intelligence through academic research that can be applied across various domains.
The institute's focus extends to supporting research and nurturing the skills of the next generation of AI developers, contributing tangibly to the knowledge-based economy.
It is anticipated that the institute will attract top scientists, innovators, and experts to develop scalable, reusable, accessible, and affordable artificial intelligence models, resulting from years of complex, expert-driven efforts. These models have the capacity to adapt to a wide array of specialized and sustainable applications in various sectors and industries.
Professor Eric Zing, President of the Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence, stated, "Our mission is to forefront academic research in the development of artificial intelligence. This institute will serve as a hub for fundamental research in areas where we have demonstrated leadership. Our focus now is on providing powerful models that can be used in specialized industries such as healthcare, climate change, and sustainability. The possibilities are boundless, and we look forward to forming strong partnerships with relevant stakeholders in this field."
The institute concentrates on the development of multimodal foundational models with versatile capabilities encompassing language, voice, vision, content analysis, content moderation, optical character recognition, and product analysis. Additionally, research will delve deeper into fundamental models like large language models such as "Chat GPT" and transformers previously trained on biological data like "AlphaFold 2".
The Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence boasts five specialized departments in computer science, computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics, offering a unique and interdisciplinary research environment. This makes it the ideal institution to lead foundational models research, with the city of Masdar serving as the new institute's headquarters.
Within four years of its inception, the university has solidified its position among the top 20 institutions globally in artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics, as per the CSRankings, placing it alongside prominent global institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Nanjing University, and the University of Washington.
Moreover, faculty and students at the Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence have contributed significantly to international AI research, presenting over 1,100 research papers at conferences since 2020 and publishing more than 1,500 articles to enhance the university's global standing in AI research.
Notably, the university recently welcomed its fourth cohort of students from over 34 nationalities and earlier this year, it greeted the fourth batch of its executive program, which continues to prepare experienced leaders and experts in artificial intelligence to enrich the thriving technological ecosystem in the UAE.