He is currently a 5th year PhD student at the Computational Science program, conducted jointly by San Diego State University-Claremont Graduate University.  He had obtained a B.Eng. in Chemical Engineering from Institut Teknologi Bandung (Indonesia), a Master of Science in Information Technology (Information Systems)  from Heriot-Watt University (UK), and a Certificate of Proficiency in Information Systems Management from Aptech Computer Education (Indonesia).

In terms of professional experience, he had an internship opportunity at Chevron Indonesia as water treatment engineer.  He also had the opportunity to work at Sunway College (Malaysia) as a research assistant and information technology trainer for school teachers.  As for now, he had been spending almost 3 years as a graduate assistant at San Diego State University,  responsible for seminar arrangements, web administration, satellite data processing, and the video conferencing facilities.

He had also obtained several athletic achievements since his young age, on the sports of table tennis, tennis, and basketball.  Ever since he was 15 years old, he have won many basketball tournaments at city level and nationwide.  Two of his top accomplishment were to obtain a silver medal at the Indonesian National College Basketball Competition 1997, and silver medal at the Malaysian National College Basketball Competition 2004.  In 1999, Akmal was also chosen as the Bandung City Statewide Collegiate Basketball All-Star team, to compete against the local professional team. Prior to his PhD study, he had also joined the Indonesian "Harlem Globetrotters" Freestyle Basketball showmanship, namely the Future Streetball of the city of Bandung.  One of the signicant games with Future Streetball was to play against the Indonesian High School All-Star team, at the Indonesian National High School Basketball League 2002 All-Star event.  Akmal has achieved the Most Valuable Player awards  twice, throughout his entire basketball career.