The Challenge
A leading tier-one university in the UAE was looking for a comprehensive, data-driven picture of UAE national academic talent across all research disciplines relevant to its academic offerings.
The university recognised that it was being constrained by its lack of an up-to-date database of Emirati researchers, from doctoral students to professors, both domestically as well as abroad. The university understood that this made strategic workforce planning and opportunity hiring difficult to execute with confidence.
Leadership needed a reliable foundation to support Emiratisation goals, faculty pipeline development and long-term community engagement with national academic talent.
Our Role
AcuityX designed and executed a full scope talent mapping project, working in collaboration with UAE universities, government agencies including the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ADEK, as well as authorised public sources. We identified, verified and profiled 235 UAE national research-active academics covering engineering, computer science, mathematics, sciences, social science, management and policy, as well as humanities.
Each profile was mapped against the client’s departmental priorities and included academic rank, institutional affiliation, research discipline, as well as contact details where appropriate. All of this was handled in compliance with ADGM and UAE privacy regulations.
We conducted institutional analysis to identify structural trends, pipeline gaps and gender patterns across the UAE’s academic landscape.
The Outcome
The university gained a reliable, evidence-based foundation to support strategic workforce planning, Emiratisation priorities and long-term engagement with UAE national academic talent. The final database provided a structured view of 198 UAE national academics aligned to the university’s research priorities, giving leadership clearer visibility of available talent across disciplines, institutions and career stages.
The accompanying analysis turned the mapping into practical insight, highlighting talent trends, institutional concentrations, pipeline gaps and gender representation across the UAE academic landscape. It showed near equal gender representation, identified the university as the primary employer of Emirati faculty, and surfaced notable gaps in advanced mathematics, humanities and emerging technology fields including artificial intelligence. This enabled the university to move from fragmented market knowledge to a more targeted, confident approach to faculty pipeline development and opportunity hiring.
