Dr. Walji received a B.S. in Biology in 2001 from the University of Texas at Dallas, and a M.S and Ph.D. in Health Informatics from University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences in December 2003, and December 2006 respectively. From 2003 to 2006, he was a National Library of Medicine (NLM) funded pre-doctoral fellow. He joined the Department of Diagnostic Sciences as Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Dental Branch in January 2007. He is a Project Leader and co-investigator for Project 1: Work-Centered Design of Care Process Improvements in HIT, which is part of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare (NCCD) funded by the ONC SHARP program.
He also serves as Principal Investigator of a NLM funded grant to develop an Inter-university Oral Health Data Repository from EHR data that will allow end users to directly explore and extract information to support their specific research or decision making needs. In addition, he serves as co-investigator on the NICDR funded project seeking to apply a cognitive approach to refine and enhance use of a Dental Diagnostic Terminology and user interface in EHRs. He has done extensive work in consumer-health informatics and E-health.
Dr. Walji is a member of the American Medical Informatics Association, Health Information Management Systems Society, American Dental Education Association and the Consortium of Oral Health Related Informatics.