Ali was awarded his BSc with honours in Mathematical Sciences from Wolverhampton University in 2003, MSc in Medical Statistics from Leicester University in 2004 and PhD in Perinatal and Psychiatric Epidemiology from Manchester University in 2008. His PhD project on the impact of maternal stress on pregnancy outcome and offspring mental illness was based on Danish population-based data. His work was published in high impact journals including the Archives of General Psychiatry and generated a lot of media interest. In May 2008, he joined the newly established Anu Research Centre at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University College Cork as a Health Research Board Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

 Ali has his own programme of research focusing on the effects of: 1) prenatal and early life stress; 2) maternal gastrointestinal conditions; 3) Caesarean section and 4) maternal characteristics on pregnancy outcome and offspring and maternal health. In the last 7 years, Ali has conducted several studies using large population based cohorts from Denmark, Sweden and the UK using various statistical modelling methods. In June 2014 was appointed a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCC. He leads several perinatal epidemiology projects in the Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Transnational Research (INFANT).

Ali has his own programme of research focusing on the effects of: 1) prenatal and early life stress; 2) maternal gastrointestinal conditions; 3) Caesarean section and 4) maternal characteristics on pregnancy outcome and offspring short and long term morbidity. In the last 7 years, Dr Khashan has conducted several studies using large population based cohorts from Denmark, Sweden and the UK using various statistical modelling methods. Currently Dr Khashan is using advanced statistical methodology such as sibling-matching and propensity scores in studies on prenatal stress and offspring psychiatric outcome and mode of delivery and Type 1 Diabetes among other projects.

Dr Khashan teaches biostatistics and epidemiology in the School of Medicine and Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistical Epidemiology for the BSc and MPH degrees in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College Cork. His teaching for the academic year 2014-2015 includes: Coordinating the advanced applied epidemiology (EH4000), BSc Public Health in the first semester. Coordinating the advanced epidemiology (EH6031), MPH in the second semester. Teaching on the meta-analysis (EH6044), MPH in the second semester. Supervising MPH epidemiology dissertations (EH6043).