NYU Abu Dhabi Students Anh Mai And Minghao Shao Named Google PhD Fellows For 2025

NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) PhD students Anh Mai and Minghao Shao have been honoured as 2025 Google PhD Fellows. They join a group of 255 students worldwide recognised for their innovative research in computer science and related fields. This fellowship offers annual funding and connects recipients with leading Google researchers who serve as mentors.

The Google PhD Fellowship Program supports outstanding graduate students engaged in research within computer science and adjacent disciplines. It aims to foster collaboration between academia and industry to tackle some of the world's most complex technological challenges.

Mai's fellowship was awarded in Systems, Networking, and Cloud Computing. His work focuses on integrating databases with prescriptive analytics, which aims to determine optimal decisions based on data-driven rules. By embedding analytics directly into databases, his research seeks to enhance decision-making processes by making them faster, more accurate, and secure.

Shao received recognition in the Privacy, Safety, and Security category for his focus on agentic systems. These are autonomous intelligent workflows designed to improve the safety and efficiency of AI-driven applications. His work contributes to developing more trustworthy AI systems that can accelerate scientific discovery and industrial innovation.

Shao conducts his research under the guidance of Professor Muhammad Shafique at NYUAD and Professor Ramesh Karri at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. This collaboration highlights the strong ties between NYU’s global campuses.

Mai's team is working on new algorithms and languages within the open-source DuckDB database management system. Their goal is to make advanced optimisation techniques more accessible by integrating prescriptive, descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analytics within the database itself.

NYU Abu Dhabi's Global Standing

According to Times Higher Education, NYU ranks among the top 31 universities globally, making NYU Abu Dhabi the highest-ranked university in the UAE. The university boasts alumni achievements including 24 Rhodes Scholars, showcasing the calibre of talent nurtured at NYUAD.

On the faculty front, NYUAD has four Nobel Laureates and over 90 faculty labs and projects. These efforts have resulted in more than 9,500 internationally recognised publications. The Nature Index ranks NYUAD first in the UAE for publications in top science journals.

"The prestigious fellowship provides annual funding and connects recipients with leading Google researchers as mentors," said a representative from Google.

With inputs from WAM