Abdelwahed is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), where he teaches and conducts research in the area of computer engineering, with specific interests in autonomic computing, cyber-physical systems, formal verification and cyber-security.

Before joining VCU in August 2017, he served as the associate director of the Distributed Analytics and Security Institute at Mississippi State University (MSU). He was also an Associate Professor in the ECE Department at MSU.

Prior to joining Mississippi State University, he was a research assistant professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and senior research scientist at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University, from 2001-2007. From 2000-2001, he worked as a research scientist with the system diagnosis group at the Rockwell Scientific Company