Top aerospace university to set-up in Al Ain

Ivan Gale

• Last Updated: February 23. 2009 7:07PM UAE / February 23. 2009 3:07PM GMT

A leading aerospace university will set up a branch campus in Al Ain as early as this autumn under a partnership with Mubadala Development, an Abu Dhabi Government investment unit, and Northrop Grumann, the US defence contractor.

The initiative to build a branch campus for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, whose graduates include six astronauts, a US congressman and senior executives in the defence industry, is part of a broader effort to make Abu Dhabi an educational hub for the region.

The programme will also support Abu Dhabi’s plans to create a leading centre for aerospace training, maintenance and manufacturing.

US News and World Report has named Embry-Riddle as the top aerospace engineering programme in the US for the past seven years. It offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, and last year it had 5,300 students at its main campuses at Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona. The university also has a distance learning programme at military bases outside the US.

The new aerospace programme may be located on the campus of UAE University, which is part-owned by Mubadala. The only existing courses in aerospace studies are provided by Emirates Aviation College in Dubai.

Final details were still being resolved, but the parties were working to welcome an inaugural class as soon as possible, said Homaid al Shemarri, the associate director of aerospace at Mubadala. “Our goal is definitely for this [autumn],” he said.

Other universities that are establishing branch campuses in Abu Dhabi include New York University and the Paris Sorbonne University.

Mubadala, the aerospace college and Northrop Grumann first signed a memorandum of understanding at the Dubai Air Show in November 2007.

“This is part of our commitment to developing a long-term relationship with the UAE,” said Jerry Spruill, a programme director for Northrop Grumman’s airborne early warning and control system.

Mr Spruill, like Mr al Shemarri, is a graduate of Embry-Riddle and helped to facilitate the partnership.

“We felt it was the right thing to do with the UAE,” he said. Northrop provides the radar on the UAE Air Force’s fleet of Block-60 F-16s and is shortlisted to supply its airborne early warning system, featuring aircraft mounted with powerful radar systems able to detect threats up to 550km away.

Mubadala is a driving force behind Abu Dhabi’s efforts to develop a regional hub for the defence industry, including specialised training, equipment maintenance and precision manufacturing.



igale@thenational.ae