His main research interests include computational social science, information retrieval, and data mining. He holds his PhD from the School of Computing at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland. He has an extensive industrial background from working earlier for IBM, Microsoft, and QCRI. Walid has over 60 peer-reviewed published articles in top tier conferences and journals. He also has a set of 9 patents filed under his name. Some of his work was featured in popular press, such as CNN, BBC, Washington Post, National Geographic, and MIT Tech reviews.