While attending law school, Akkad worked as a summer associate and then a law clerk for the firm on its Chemistry and Life Sciences team and performed various tasks related to patent prosecution including drafting patent applications, preparing responses to office actions, and researching freedom-to-operate issues. He was a member of the George Washington Law Review. Akkad was also a summer associate during 2017 in the New York City office of an international law firm where he worked on patent prosecution and litigation matters including actions before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and International Trade Commission (ITC).

While attending Cornell University, Akkad was a chemistry intern at E. & J. Gallo Winery in Modesto, California where he performed various analyses to measure chemical markers of maturity and quality in grapes. He was an undergraduate research assistant in the Lin Group at Cornell University where he independently developed and implemented experiments for investigations of MHC Class I antigens. As a scholarship holder through the RISE Program of the German Academic Exchange Service, Akkad was also a research assistant in the Institute for Bioorganic Chemistry at the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Jülich, Germany, where he conducted research into the development of new synthetic pathways for natural, anti-tumorigenic agents.

Akkad is proficient in Arabic and German.