Building the Future: RIT Dubai

RIT Dubai

builds state-of-the-art

new campus

RIT Dubai quickly outgrew its original home just 12 years after the global campus launched. Now students are enjoying a state-of-the-art new campus focused on interactive learning designed to accommodate up to 2,300 students.

RIT Dubai completed phase one of construction on its new campus in the Dubai Silicon Oasis in spring 2021. It spans 129,000 square meters with collaborative teaching and research spaces envisioned to be a positive and healthy environment to encourage independence, informal and creative meetings, socializing, and participation.

At the heart of the new campus is a centralized courtyard with an innovation center as its focal point, overlooked by all other academic buildings. The campus includes a wide range of spaces designed to facilitate instruction, learning communities, research and innovation laboratories for experiential learning, collaborative meeting and events areas, and more. Students have access to extensive amenities including a fitness center, activity rooms, clinic, dining hall, a prayer room, communal lounges, and nearby public transportation.

Next up: Phase two—which will allow the campus to accommodate up to 4,000 students, adding more classroom, research, and collaboration spaces as well as student housing—is expected to begin within the next five years.

The Inspiration and Gifts

The United Arab Emirates government is funding the approximately $136 million project.

RIT Dubai Campus Walkthrough

Special Features

Two main axes connect the different functions of the campus with the Innovation Lab at their intersection resembling the core of a quantum microchip.

The HP Gaming Lounge located in the Business and Management Department will allow collaboration between the university and industry partners.

The campus features labs dedicated to smart energy, robotics, networking and security, thermo fluids, human factors, and many other research areas.

The buildings are connected through bridges and embed smart classroom technology and accessibility features. Exterior features include a green linear park at the main entrance and a series of small courtyard spaces with fountains and loggia to reduce solar heat.

RIT Dubai was established in 2009 and has grown student enrollment to more than 900 students.

Yousef Al Assaf.

RIT’s commitment toward distinctive education through its recognition as an innovative and creative university with a global reach is highly evident in the design of its new campus in Dubai. Designing, building, and moving into such a facility achieves a huge milestone for us.

It will provide students, faculty, and community members with uncharted opportunities where research, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship can flourish while in parallel strengthening and developing more partnerships with renowned regional and international corporations in order to achieve our ambitious goals.

Yousef Al Assaf

RIT Dubai President

Exterior of the R I T Dubai campus.

Learn more about RIT Dubai