Abdalla mainly focuses on extracting information about cosmology using different probes of large scale structure, including baryonic oscillations and weak gravitational lensing. He also studies the epoch of reionisation with current and future radio telescopes in order to unveil how the first structures formed in our Universe.
Abdalla spent most of his time preparing the ground for doing cosmology with radio telescopes. He has helped outline and design the Square Kilometre Array. It will measure galaxies at low redshift and take pictures of the Epoch of Reionisation at the highest possible redshifts accessible via such telescopes. He optimised such telescopes to measure cosmology via Large Scale Structure, and drawn up novel methods to help analyse and clean such data. Besides, he has been heavily involved in the pathfinder instruments that will pave the way in terms of science delivery such as the LOFAR telescope and the Bingo telescope.
Abdalla is currently one of the PIs for the BINGO telescope, an international collaboration with a large Chinese-Brazilian research group.