Akl earned his MD from the American University of Beirut and his MPH from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed residency in internal medicine and fellowship in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Past research experience includes completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Seidman Laboratory of Harvard Medical School where he used targeted and exome sequencing to identify genetic causes of cardiomyopathies and congenital heart disease, and founding and studying a national registry of homozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia patients in Lebanon. He is currently studying genomic risk prediction in coronary artery disease, and is interested in improving prediction, prevention and treatment of coronary heart disease by harnessing genomic data and deep phenotyping in large biobanks. Akl is jointly mentored by Patrick and Amit Khera.