PhD in Natural Language Processing
About This Programme
A University-funded (Year 1, pending a faculty advisor match) PhD in Natural Language Processing: research on language models, speech and multilinguality with a 32-credit thesis.
Course Highlights
- Ph.D. students are centrally funded by MBZUAI in Year 1 while matching with a faculty advisor, then funded by that advisor from Year 2, subject to a confirmed match and satisfactory progress.
- Research on foundation models, dialogue, speech, multilinguality and vision-language.
- Access to computing labs with nearly 1,000 Nvidia DGZ-1/2 GPU servers.
- Qualifying and Candidacy exams then a 32-credit thesis.
What You'll Study
A 3–4 year full-time doctoral programme on the Masdar City campus with advanced NLP cores, electives, research methods and an internship, a Qualifying Exam (Year 1) and Candidacy Exam (Year 2), then an original 32-credit thesis. Ph.D. students are centrally funded by MBZUAI in Year 1 while matching with a faculty advisor, then move to that advisor's funding from Year 2, subject to a confirmed match and satisfactory progress.
Core courses
Core: 8 credit hours, taken by every student. MBZUAI's completion table counts the core as 3 courses / 8 credit hours while its core-course table lists two (NLP805 plus a choice of NLP806 or NLP807) that total 8. Its elective panel says 'select 10 credit hours' where the completion table and the study plan both give 16. Stored to the completion table and study plan.
- Natural Language Processing - Ph.D. (NLP805)4 credits
- Advanced Natural Language Processing - Ph.D. (NLP806) OR Speech Processing - Ph.D. (NLP807)4 credits
Research methods, internship and thesis
- Advanced Research Methods (RES899)2 credits
- Ph.D. Internship (up to four months) (INT899)2 credits
- Natural Language Processing Ph.D. Research Thesis (NLP899)32 credits
Elective courses
Sixteen credit hours of electives, taken across semesters 1-3 in the published study plan.
Published elective list
- Single Cell Biology and Bioinformatics (CBIO803)4 credits
- Advanced Foundations of AI System Design (CS8201)4 credits
- Advanced Computer Vision (CV801)4 credits
- Advanced 3D Computer Vision (CV802)4 credits
- 3D Geometry Processing (CV804)4 credits
- Life-long Learning Agents for Vision (CV805)4 credits
- Advanced Topics in Vision and Language (CV806)4 credits
- Safe and Robust Computer Vision (CV807)4 credits
- Medical Multimodal Vision (CV8501)2 credits
- Trustworthy Medical Vision (CV8502)2 credits
- Advanced Topics in Large Multimodal Models (CV8503)2 credits
- Advanced Topics in Continuous Optimization (ML804)4 credits
- Advanced Topics in Reinforcement Learning (ML806)4 credits
- Causality and Machine Learning (ML808)4 credits
- Advanced Learning Theory (ML809)4 credits
- Dimensionality Reduction and Manifold Learning (ML813)4 credits
- Advanced Parallel and Distributed Machine Learning Systems (ML815)4 credits
- Emerging Topics in Trustworthy ML (ML818)4 credits
- Foundations of Machine Learning (ML8101)2 credits
- Advanced Machine Learning (ML8102)2 credits
- Sequential Decision Making (ML8103)4 credits
- Algorithms for Big Data (ML8501)2 credits
- Machine Learning Security (ML8502)4 credits
- Probabilistic Graphical Models (ML8503)2 credits
- Data Synthesis (ML8504)2 credits
- Tiny Machine Learning (ML8505)2 credits
- Interpretable AI (ML8506)2 credits
- Predictive Statistical Inference and Uncertainty Quantification (ML8507)2 credits
- Privacy and Fairness (ML8508)2 credits
- Collaborative Learning (ML8509)4 credits
- Graph Machine Learning and Topics in Generative AI (ML8510)2 credits
- Machine Learning for Industry (ML8511)2 credits
- Advanced Natural Language Processing - Ph.D. (NLP806)4 credits
- Speech Processing - Ph.D. (NLP807)4 credits
- Current Topics in Natural Language Processing (NLP808)4 credits
- Advanced Speech Processing (NLP809)4 credits
- Vision-to-Language Generation (NLP8501)2 credits
Entry Requirements
Three references and an independent research statement. Screening exam and technical interview.
Careers
Graduates pursue NLP research-scientist and faculty roles across academia and industry.
Accreditation & Professional Recognition
Accredited by the UAE Commission for Academic Accreditation (status Active on the CAA register).
Programme Details
Award
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Natural Language Processing
Start Date
Annual Fall intake (August)
Typical Offer
Bachelor's CGPA 3.5 or master's 3.0 (STEM); IELTS 6.5 / TOEFL 90
Duration
4 years
Qualification
Doctorate
Subject Area
Natural Language Processing
Study Pattern
Full time
Delivery Format
In person