Muhammad Abulaish is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi, India. With more than 27 years of experience in academia, research, and academic administration, he has established a strong interdisciplinary research profile in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Network Analytics. Since joining SAU in 2016, he has held several academic leadership positions, including Chairperson of the Department of Computer Science (2016–2018 and 2021–2023), Director (Admissions and Examinations), and Acting Registrar (2022–2024).

Prior to joining SAU, he served for over eighteen years at Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi, where he held various academic and administrative responsibilities, including Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science. He also worked for more than two years at the Centre of Excellence in Information Assurance, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he led the Internet Surveillance and Forensics Research Group.

He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi in 2007. He is the founder of the Laboratory for Data Science and Analytics (LDSA) at SAU, an interdisciplinary research laboratory focused on data-intensive approaches for addressing real-world societal and industrial challenges.

His research interests broadly span Data Science and Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and Explainable Text and Social Media Analytics. His work focuses on the development of intelligent and data-driven methodologies for analyzing large-scale and complex information systems, with applications to social media analytics, sentiment and emotion analysis, health informatics, and AI-driven social cybersecurity and misinformation detection.

He has authored more than 163 research publications in leading international journals, conference proceedings, and edited volumes, including multiple papers published in IEEE and ACM Transactions. His research has appeared in several prominent venues in data mining, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and network science.

He currently serves as Associate Editor of two leading international journals in his research domain: Social Network Analysis and Mining (Springer) and Online Social Networks and Media (Elsevier). He was also appointed to the Distinguished Review Board of ACM Transactions on the Web for the term 2022–2024. He has served multiple times as a Senior Program Committee Member of ACM CIKM (2023–2025), one of the premier international conferences in the areas of information retrieval, knowledge management, data mining, and database systems. In addition, he regularly contributes to the program committees of several internationally reputed conferences, including SDM, CIKM, IJCAI-ECAI, PAKDD, ASONAM, and WI-IAT. He has also served in various organizational roles, including Publicity Co-Chair for WI’19 and WI’20, and Workshop Co-Chair for ASONAM’20.

He is a Senior Member of IEEE, ACM, and CSI, and a Life Member of ISTE, IETE, and ISCA.