He is professor and holder of the Chair in Computer Architecture and Communication at Humboldt University in Berlin since 1994. In 1977, he was a visiting scholar at the Department of Systems Design at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, then Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor at the University of Texas at Austin where he was also a holder of the Bettie Margaret Smith and the Southwestern Bell Professorships in Engineering.
Malek's research interests focus on dependable architectures and services in parallel, distributed and embedded computing environments. He has participated in two pioneering parallel computer projects, contributed to the theory and practice of parallel network design, developed the comparison-based method for system diagnosis, codeveloped comprehensive WSI and networks testing techniques, proposed the consensus-based framework for responsive (fault-tolerant, real-time) computer systems design and has made numerous other contributions, reflected in over 120 publications and five books.
He has organized, chaired, and been a program committee member of numerous IEEE and ACM international conferences and workshops. Among others, he was program and general chairman of the Real-Time Systems Symposium in 1984 and 1985 respectively, and in 1994 general chairman of the 24th Fault-Tolerant Computing Symposium, Program Cochair of 22nd Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems in 2003 and he is Program Chair of the International Service Availability Symposium in 2004. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing and Journal of Interconnection Networks and serves on the board of Real-Time Systems Journal.
Malek was a Visiting Scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY and at Italian National Research Center (CNR) in Pisa and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and New York University and held the IBM Chair at Keio University in Japan.
Malek has been teaching a number of courses on computer architecture, dependability and technical entrepreneurship with emphasis on e-business and internet technologies. He is a consultant to startup companies and multinational corporations advising on both technical and strategic directions and activities.