Ali Selamat was an academician at  Malaysia Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. An academic institution established under the cooperation of JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) and Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE) to provide Japanese-oriented engineering education in Malaysia (http://mjiit.utm.my/).  Currently he is serving as the Dean for the institute. He is also current a chair of IEEE Computer Society, Malaysia Section.

Prof.  Ali was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Director of ICT, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He was the Dean of Research Alliance in Knowledge Economy (K-Economy RA) UTM which is currently renamed as Smart Digital Community Research Alliance, UTM. He is currently a professor in Software Engineering at Faculty of Computing, UTM. Previously he was an IT Manager at School of Graduate Studies (SPS), UTM. He is also was a head of Software Engineering Research Group (SERG), K-Economy Research Alliance, UTM. He is also the editorial board of Knowledge-Based Systems Journal Elsevier, International Journal of Information and Database Systems (IJIDS), Inderscience Publications, Vietnam Journal of Computer Science, World Scientific Publications, Service Oriented Computing, Springer Verlag and PSU Research Review: An International Journal, published by Emerlad Publications. His research interests include cloud computing, software security, software engineering, software agents, web engineering, information retrievals, pattern recognition, genetic algorithms, neural networks and soft-computing.

He received a Diploma in Computer Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), B.Sc. (Hons.) in IT from Teesside University, United Kingdom and M.Sc. in Distributed Multimedia Interactive Systems from Lancaster University, United Kingdom. He received Japanese Language Certificate from Osaka University of Foreign Studies which is currently is part of Osaka University, Japan. He has received a Dr. Eng. degree from Osaka Prefecture University, Japan. 

Ali Selamat is currently a visiting Professor at Hradec Kralove University, Czech Republic, Kagioshima Institute of Technology, Japan. He was a visiting Professor at Kuwait University, Japan Universities, Universitas Islam Sultan Agung (UNISULA) Indonesia, and keynote speaker in many international conferences.