PhD in Robotics
About This Programme
A University-funded (Year 1, pending a faculty advisor match) PhD in Robotics: motion planning, multi-robot systems and humanoid robotics research 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 in perception, human-robot interaction, swarm intelligence and autonomous systems.
- 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 robotics 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: 4 courses, 16 credit hours, taken by every student. The published study plan writes the summer internship as INT799; the core-course and internship panels both give INT899, the doctoral code, which is stored here.
- Advanced Robotic Motion Planning (ROB801)4 credits
- Advanced Topics in Robotics: Multi-robot Systems (ROB802)4 credits
- Advanced Humanoid Robotics (ROB803)4 credits
- Vision for Autonomous Robotics (ROB804)4 credits
Research methods, internship and thesis
- Advanced Research Methods (RES899)2 credits
- Ph.D. Internship (up to four months) (INT899)2 credits
- Robotics Ph.D. Research Thesis (ROB899)32 credits
Elective courses
Students select a minimum of two elective courses totalling 8 credit hours.
Published elective list
- Single Cell Biology and Bioinformatics (CBIO8101)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
- 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
- Probabilistic Graphical Models (ML8503)2 credits
- Collaborative Learning (ML8509)4 credits
- Natural Language Processing - Ph.D. (NLP805)4 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 robotics and autonomous-systems research 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 Robotics
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
Robotics
Study Pattern
Full time
Delivery Format
In person