Chancellor's Message

The people of the United Arab Emirates hold a special place in their hearts for the United Arab Emirates University. It was founded as a flagship university for the nation with a mission to foster the sustainable development of our country. Over the past four decades the University has advanced scientific knowledge and scholarship of culture and society, guided by the clear directives of our leadership and sustained by the productive alliances it has forged with partners and institutions within our local communities and across global networks.

Today the University enjoys an international reputation for academic leadership and continues to serve the vision of its founder, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan – may his soul rest in eternal peace, and our present leader, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates.  Our purpose is to engage, transform, and enable young people, so that they are prepared to address the challenges of tomorrow.  Through their education, students develop the tools, skills, and attitudes required for innovation, life-long learning, curiosity, creativity and rigorous truth-seeking.  We prepare them to excel, and inspire them to progress, and ensure they have the flexibility and resilience required to succeed and create prosperity and wellbeing in a future of social, economic, and political upheaval and change.

Our community of faculty, administrative staff and students is justifiably proud of the University’s service to the nation and its contribution to realizing the plans and aspirations of the country’s leadership.  We have played a leading role in the institutionalization and professionalization of the nation, providing highly skilled graduates in diverse specialist fields including medicine, science, engineering, technology, literature, arts, humanities, economics, law, agriculture, and business.  These serve the needs of the public and private sectors and respond to the requirements of local communities and their organizations.  Our graduates meet the challenges of the present and are future ready.  We are proud of our Alumni, who number in the tens of thousands. They have achieved great advances and success in their various fields of employment, helping to create the UAE into a modern, highly developed nation that progresses an important role on the global stage.

The University is committed to providing its students with a welcoming, supportive, and stimulating academic, social, and cultural environment.  This safe and secure home base enables and inspires students to explore and widen their horizons, follow their curiosities and take risks, and discover and grow their different talents.  Our students are encouraged to sharpen their thinking, and to identify and develop their distinctive personalities. We cultivate the foundations necessary for faculty and researchers to progress their intellectual inquiries and apply them to the needs of the nation. We are cognizant that the grave challenges and transformations experienced by societies in today’s world necessitate the active, vigorous pursuit of innovation and entrepreneurship.  In these ways, our scholars – students, faculty, and researchers, develop the aptitudes and qualifications that are prerequisites for the sustainable development and progress of our country in the years ahead.

We will therefore marshal our efforts and resources so that these are deployed effectively to fulfil our leadership’s vision of the leading role of our nation in the world of tomorrow.  This requires us to align our academic strategies to the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence.  For this reason we have introduced undergraduate and graduate programs that trace, pursue, and seek scientific and technical advances, and are consistent with practices at leading international universities. Our research infrastructure is modelled to the needs of scientific discovery and technological innovation, and includes a center dedicated to advancing the exploration of Space.  With these directions, our university will achieve global recognition for its research excellence.

We share immense pride in the ways in which the University is fulfilling its role in empowering the current generation to meet the challenges of today and to serve the national agenda for the next 50 years in the development of the United Arab Emirates.

 

H.E Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh
Chancellor,  United Arab Emirates University