New York University Abu Dhabi’s Global Ph.D. Student Fellowship: My Experiences
I was asked a lot of questions about my experience as a Ph.D. student with the Global Ph.D. Student Fellowship from New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). I want to share my journey about this interesting, unique, and exciting joint Ph.D. program between New York University (NYU) and NYUAD.
I really enjoyed being part of this fellowship, as I spent a fully funded year of studies in New York and spent my research years fully funded at NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi. I enjoyed the perks of traveling and the generous packages offered by the fellowship, which covered housing and air travel costs, on top of a monthly stipend. I encourage a lot of people to look into it, though I know some folks may be hesitant to spend several years of research in Abu Dhabi, which even came to me as an unexpected part of my life, having lived in Connecticut my entire life before.
What is it?
This fellowship funds several years of your Ph.D. research, given good academic standing and solid research progress. This fellowship is essentially a joint program between one of the many schools of NYU and NYUAD. For instance, the program I was part of was a joint program between NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering (SOE) and NYUAD.
Many people mistakenly think the funding comes from New York, but it is actually coming from Abu Dhabi. Hence, while I was required to complete course requirements in New York, I was required to spend my research years in Abu Dhabi, under the supervision of an NYUAD-based professor.
When I enrolled and graduated, NYU treated me as an NYU Tandon SOE Ph.D. student. This means the course requirements and research requirements were set by Tandon SOE’s Ph.D. program. But the funding came from the Abu Dhabi fellowship.
How do I apply for it?
I applied for the computer science Ph.D. program using the standard process set by NYU’s Tandon SOE. See more about the process here: https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/admissions/graduate/global-phd-student-fellowships-in-engineering.html
One key thing is to also indicate in your application that you’re interested in research at NYUAD. Another thing you should do is to reach out to potential professors who can be your research supervisor before you send in your application. I was already working with a professor based in NYUAD, so that increased my chances of getting the fellowship. This also helped me write the statement of purpose required by the application and provided more focus on the research topic.
There are other majors offered aside from engineering or computer science at Tandon SOE. But you must apply for the Ph.D. program at the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) and you must ensure that the major of interest has a supervisor available from NYUAD.
My graduate school experience
I started the program in 2015 and completed it in 2020. The first year was spent in New York completing courses.
I wasn’t really into my courses, as I liked my research work the most. My favorite course was the one on data visualization, as there was a huge overlap with my work in building user-friendly data extraction tools.
So, I definitely looked forward to my research work which was the focus over the next 4 years. I also liked working under my research advisor, who was well-connected and publishing at top-tier computer science conferences. Our personalities had meshed well enough for a long-term supervisor-student relationship.
After the first year of studies, I was required to undergo the qualifying exam, where a committee of professors from Tandon and an external researcher tests whether my proposed research topic is worthy of continuing a Ph.D. The rules of the qualifying exam have since changed when I last took it in 2016.
The qualifying exam required me to submit a short proposal document and do an hour-long presentation about my research topic. I had presented my work on a program synthesis tool for automatically extracting texts from documents, which by then I had research results to show from a user study I had conducted. It is not necessary to have this level of results for the qualifying exam, as I know some students did not necessarily have results but presented evidence from their literature review of a potential research project worthy of a Ph.D.
During my research years, I also interned with IBM in California and collaborated on research projects that heavily contributed to my thesis topic. This experience really helped me construct a cohesive thesis by the time I had to defend.
In the 3rd year of my Ph.D. program, I was required to do a thesis proposal and thesis presentation. This basically shows the committee that I have made progress in my research and am working on the thesis. By then, I had worked on three projects and built a research prototype for each project. Much of these projects used a variety of existing techniques across several subfields in computer science and I used these approaches to solve challenges in data extraction.
And in my 5th and final year, I completed writing and defending my thesis. I defended my thesis during the height of the pandemic. Had the pandemic not been there, my Abu Dhabi-based advisor and I were required to fly to New York, where I would do my defense.
However, everything went remote and I defended over Zoom. We had to coordinate a time across 3 different time zones, as the external member on my Ph.D. committee was tuning in from California, my advisor and I tuned in from Abu Dhabi, and the rest of my Ph.D. committee tuned in from New York.
To summarize, my experience pretty much followed the rules outlined by Tandon SOE: https://engineering.nyu.edu/academics/programs/computer-science-phd
The only key difference was that I completed my research requirements in Abu Dhabi.
What was it like being in Abu Dhabi compared to being in New York?
Faculty
There were more faculty members in New York compared to Abu Dhabi. So most Abu Dhabi Ph.D. students tend to stick to their advisor and rarely advisor hop. Pivoting their research work in Abu Dhabi is definitely a lot tougher, as they don’t have many faculty members who could possibly help out in their targeted niche topic unless they reached out to externals. However, this has probably changed since the last time I was there, as NYUAD has expanded its faculty sizes.
Funding
Another difference is that being part of NYUAD got me several funding perks. Since the community was small and the funding was quite generous, many of the research activities I had to take on were always funded. That may not be the case for most graduate students in New York, where there is a bigger community and the competition for resources is a lot more. For instance, going to conferences was always a fully-funded trip. Or buying technical equipment was always covered. However, some of the students I would meet from New York did not necessarily have those perks.
Housing
My favorite part about being in Abu Dhabi that I definitely did not have in New York was an amazing apartment, which was leased to me as part of the Fellowship award. In New York, I either commuted very long hours or I lived in a shared space. In Abu Dhabi, I lived in a fancy, one-bedroom apartment in the graduate housing on campus at NYUAD. It had large floor-to-ceiling windows and it came fully furnished with a TV, kitchen appliances, bed, desk, and shelves.
Infrastructure
Another thing I loved about Abu Dhabi that I could not find being in New York or in the US, in general, was an excellently maintained road infrastructure. I am quite unique in that I appreciate a well-maintained road, and I think the UAE does an amazing job doing that compared to the US. I adventured around the UAE a lot because of how much I loved driving the UAE roads.
Entertainment and Socialization
Some folks complain that the UAE gets boring easily. That is true, but I think that’s true anywhere you go if you don’t foster your hobbies and passions during your free time.
If you expect a New York vibe, where you casually stroll through the city and expect to be entertained because of how there’s almost always something happening, then you will be disappointed at Abu Dhabi. It’s simply not that kind of a city. At least when I was living there.
If you are a social butterfly, the UAE can get tough as many people come and go very quickly after working for one to two years. Many people see UAE as a temporary place before moving on to a different country. And being enrolled in a Ph.D. program that requires several years in the UAE can be a deal-breaker. And this can be a challenging city if you’re looking to find someone to settle with as well.
Career Prospects
Unfortunately, being based in Abu Dhabi for too long may get a bit stifling in terms of future career prospects. In my experience, I did not find too many research opportunities in Abu Dhabi as most companies tend to have their research labs in the US or Europe. Bigger companies tend to bring business interfacing departments to Abu Dhabi, which makes it challenging for STEM folks like me to find a post-graduate career in the industry in Abu Dhabi. I had to tap into my American peers for US-based job opportunities fit for me after I graduated.
Luckily, being enrolled in this Ph.D. program also qualifies foreigners for the OPT work authorization, which allows them to work in the US. But even with this hurdle, I find that many of my fellow Abu Dhabi cohorts managed to land US-based postgraduate jobs.
So, this pretty much sums up my experience of being enrolled in a joint Ph.D. program that’s held both in New York and Abu Dhabi. It’s definitely not a traditional Ph.D. program but it came with several perks, including an overall fulfilling graduate school experience!
By Maeda Hanafi
