Abu Dhabi, UAE: Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) has successfully concluded the 2025 edition of its flagship
Undergraduate Research Internship Program (UGRIP) – its largest and most diverse cohort to date.
The fully funded, four-week residency brought together 57 top-performing undergraduate students from 24 countries and leading global institutions, including the Indian Institutes of Technology; Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Campinas; Monterrey Institute of Technology; and Nazarbayev University.
Hosted annually at MBZUAI’s campus in Abu Dhabi, UGRIP offers students in their final or penultimate year of undergraduate study an immersive opportunity to work alongside world-renowned faculty on cutting-edge AI research projects. This year’s projects spanned machine learning, computer vision, robotics, natural language processing, and core computer science disciplines for real-world impact.
“UGRIP is a cornerstone of our mission to open up AI education and research to the brightest talent globally, regardless of background or geography,” said Professor Timothy Baldwin, MBZUAI’s Provost and Professor of Natural Language Processing. “This edition was a record-breaking year for applications and selectivity, and the program has clearly emerged as one of the most competitive and sought-after undergraduate AI research experiences globally.”
With an acceptance rate of 4%, the 2025 edition attracted nearly 2,000 applications from outstanding students around the world, an incredible year-on-year increase of 91%.
“As these numbers evidence, the very best undergraduate students from around the world are looking to engage in AI research and innovation and increasingly look to MBZUAI and Abu Dhabi as the destination of choice to achieve that ambition. While deep immersion into research is at the heart of the experience, we also provide opportunities for students to engage with the unique culture of the UAE and its rapidly growing AI ecosystem,” Professor Baldwin said.
Participants in this year’s cohort were selected based on academic excellence, research potential, and a demonstrated passion for AI, and came from STEM disciplines such as computer science, computer engineering, mathematics, data science, biotechnology, and software engineering. The most represented countries among participants were Egypt, the United States, Russia, India, and Kazakhstan.
Interns were embedded in faculty-led research teams working on a range of high-impact projects. These included developing models for brain tumor detection; creating an automated system for media bias detection; designing interactive music generation systems; machine translation for dialectal Arabic; and building early-stage frameworks for brain-machine interface systems. These projects reflect the breadth and depth of MBZUAI’s research and give students the opportunity to contribute to original work in a hands-on and collaborative environment.
Applications for UGRIP 2026 will open in January of next year. MBZUAI invites undergraduate students in STEM-related fields, with a CGPA of 3.5 or above (or equivalent), who are in their final or second-last year of study to apply.
About Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI)
MBZUAI is a research-focused university in Abu Dhabi, and the first university dedicated entirely to the advancement of science through AI. The university empowers the next generation of AI leaders, driving innovation and impactful applications of AI through world-class education and interdisciplinary research. In 2025, MBZUAI launched its first ever undergraduate program, a Bachelor of Science in AI, with two distinct streams: Business and Engineering.