INTERNATIONAL investigators will examine whether militant Islamists infiltrated an Australian-owned university to recruit a Nigerian accused of trying to bomb a US-bound flight, a terrorism expert says.

Security agencies from the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the US will try to determine whether Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's contact with radical groups began while studying at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, said Adam Dolnik, a terrorism expert at the university.

The accused bomber enrolled in a master of international business degree in January but disappeared from the university residence where he was living mid-year.

Dr Dolnik, a director of research at the university's Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, said an alienated and homesick student could undergo rapid radicalisation if extreme influences offered support.

He said this could have taken place in Dubai or earlier when Mr Abdulmutallab, 23, was studying at University College, London.