NYU Abu Dhabi PhD students Anh Mai and Minghao Shao are two of 255 students awarded the 2025 Google PhD fellowship. This award recognized specific PhD students for their outstanding research work in exceptional and innovative research in areas relevant to computer science and related fields. It includes a yearly bursary, as well as being paired with relevant Google research mentors.
Anh Mai who was awarded a fellowship in the Systems, Networking, and Cloud Computing category explained that his research focus is an intersection between databases and choosing the best recommendation while following certain rules, or known as prescriptive analytics.
Prescriptive analytics can be used for regular tasks that are data intensive. Data often has to be exported from large databases and processed by external algorithms to find the best options. This data movement increases the chance of errors and risks exposing sensitive information. By placing prescriptive analytics inside the database, those decisions can be made directly and securely where the data already lives.
Mai had previously created similar tools that can handle large data. However, those tools only exist as research prototypes, not as easy-to-use products. Using them would require a lot of work from the user to adapt it for their needs.
Mai’s current project aims to bring all these tools into a practical setting where the team would develop their language and algorithms inside a well-established database management system called “DuckDB.” The final DuckDB infrastructure will allow for a fast and smooth user experience. Mai’s goal right now is to make these optimization problems immediately available to the public without the expertise of using complicated solvers or handling data movement. He isn’t stopping there. He says, “We plan to bring everything into the database not only for prescriptive analytics ‘what should we do?’ but also for descriptive analytics (‘what happened?’), diagnostic analytics (‘why did it happen?’), and predictive analytics (‘what will happen?’).”
For Minghao Shao who was awarded a fellowship in the Privacy, Safety, and Security category, his primary research focuses on agentic systems, studying advanced autonomous workflows and intelligent automation to enhance the effectiveness of AI-drive applications.
Shao’s research can lead to smarter AI tools to help developers, scientists, and engineers work more efficiently and securely. “In the long term, (my research) aims to both advance the development of AI systems and their underlying foundation models, fostering trustworthy and efficient AI, and to extend the application of AI across diverse domains: accelerating interdisciplinary scientific research and driving progress in industrial innovation,” Shao says.
Shao was drawn to NYUAD because his research interests are closely aligned with Professor Muhammad Shafique’s research direction, as well as his co-advisor in NYU Tandon, Professor Ramesh Karri.
Having completed his master’s degree in the US, Shao values the opportunity to experience a new environment in the UAE. He says, “It’s not only enriching from an academic and professional perspective but also offers a chance to engage with a different culture and community, which I find personally rewarding.”
NYU Abu Dhabi is ranked number one in the UAE for publications in the world’s top science journals (Nature Index). The University has established more than 90 faculty labs and projects, producing over 9,200 internationally recognized research publications. Times Higher Education ranks NYU among the world’s top 31 universities, making NYUAD the highest globally ranked university in the UAE.
