• The Empirical Methods for Natural Language Processing Conference (EMNLP 2022), organized by NYU Abu Dhabi and MBZUAI, will be held, both virtually and in-person, in Abu Dhabi from December 7-11

Abu Dhabi, UAE: New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), in partnership with Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), kicked off today, December 7, the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), which will run until December 11.

Taking place in Abu Dhabi for the first time, leading voices in artificial intelligence will deliver keynote speeches. These include Mona Diab, lead AI research scientist with Meta, and Professor of Computer Science at the George Washington University; Neil Cohn, an American cognitive scientist best known for his research on the overlap in structure and cognition between language and graphic communication including comics and emojis; Gary Marcus, a scientist, best-selling author, and serial entrepreneur; and Nazneen Rajan, research lead at Hugging Face, a startup with a mission to democratize machine learning.

Local organizing committee co-chairs include NYUAD Professor and Program Head of Computer Science Nizar Habash and MBZUAI President Professor Eric Xing.

Habash commented: “We are very excited to welcome some of the world’s top scientists in artificial intelligence, specifically Natural Language Processing (NLP), to Abu Dhabi for the 2022 EMNLP conference for the first time. Together, we will engage with key stakeholders in a vital global community conversation for what lies ahead in this field. NLP is altering the fundamental interaction between humans and machines, and with the dynamically evolving language and technology we continue to witness, it can be utilized in new fields of science and business to make a positive impact on our lives.”

“EMNLP is a unique opportunity for Abu Dhabi to engage with world leaders in NLP, and to showcase the nation’s AI capabilities and aspirations,” Professor Timothy Baldwin, Associate Provost for Academic and Student Affairs, Acting Department Chair of NLP at MBZUAI, said. “MBZUAI is creating a world leading department in recognition of the unique requirements of NLP in the region in terms of dialect support, multilinguality, and to help knock down digital barriers for UAE society.”

In her talk, Diab will explore practical ideas around framing a responsible NLP vision with higher scientific standards, issuing a call to action and an invitation to various stakeholders to engage in multilateral conversations on the issue. Cohn will deliver a speech on multimodal language faculty and the visual languages of comics, while Marcus will delve into role models like GPT-3 and PaLM play in artificial general intelligence (AGI). Rajani will highlight key takeaways from a systematic study of 75K models on Hugging Face, the benchmarking, and evaluating NLP models.

With a total of 2,500 expected to partake in the conference both virtually and in-person, EMNLP 2022 will feature six tutorials and 24 workshops, including the Seventh Arabic Natural Language Processing Workshop, the 13th International Workshop on Health Text Mining and Information Analysis, as well as the Fourth Workshop on Financial Technology and Natural Language Processing among others. Additionally, EMNLP 2022 will have two co-located conferences on Machine Translation and Computational Natural Language Learning. The conference’s industrial sponsors include Amazon, Apple, Bloomberg, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Duolingo, among others.

In addition to leveraging Abu Dhabi’s strong MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) infrastructure and capabilities, the conference has also received additional support in various aspects from the Abu Dhabi Convention and Exhibition Bureau (ADCEB), part of the Department of Tourism and Culture – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi).

EMNLP 2022 is being held at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) until December 11 with an option to attend in person or virtually. Those interested in attending can register here: 2022.emnlp.org/registration/

EMNLP is a leading conference in the area of natural language processing and artificial intelligence. Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence that considers the interactions between computers and human language. The discipline helps machines process and understand human language so that they can automatically perform repetitive tasks. Everyday examples include machine translation, automatic summarization, and automatic spelling correction.  EMNLP is a very competitive conference with about a 20 percent acceptance rate of submitted full scientific papers.  All conference publications will be publicly available for free at the Anthology of the  Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).

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About NYU Abu Dhabi 

NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a highly selective program with majors in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, arts, and humanities with a world center for advanced research. Its campus enables students to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world, and to advance cooperation and progress on humanity’s shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi’s high-achieving students have come from some 120 countries and speak over 115 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU maintains on six continents. 

About Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI)

MBZUAI is a graduate research university focused on artificial intelligence, computer science, and digital technologies across industrial sectors. The university aims to empower students, businesses, and governments to advance artificial intelligence as a global force for positive progress. MBZUAI offers various graduate programs designed to pursue advanced, specialized knowledge and skills in artificial intelligence, including computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing. To learn more about the criteria and the admission process, click here. For more information, please visit www.mbzuai.ac.ae

For press inquiries, please contact:
Aya Sakoury
Head of Communications at MBZUAI
aya.sakoury@mbzuai.ac.ae
Maisoon Mubarak
Assistant Director of Media and Communications at NYU Abu Dhabi
​​​​​​​maisoon.mubarak@nyu.edu