- Cyber Defence and AI Security

- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

- Network and Wireless Security

- Distributed Ledger Technology

- Digital Twins

2025: External Examiner for the School Assessment Boards for Applied & Business Computing, UWS.
2025: The Royal Society International Exchanges Committee (Formal Appointment).
2025: Best Student Paper Award, HUCAPP/VISIGRAPP, Porto, Portugal.
2024: Best Paper Award, IEEE SITE 2024 (workshop), Athens, Greece.
2024: SEDA Leading Undergraduate Programmes Certification.
2024: Best Paper Award, IEEE IWCMC, Ayia Napa, Cyprus.
2024: Best Paper Award, EAI INISCOM, Da Nang, Vietnam.
2024: QUB's Individual Performance Award.
2024: QUB's EEECS PGR (SPRC) Paper Award. 
2023: Best Paper Award, IEEE CAMAD 2023, Edinburgh, Scotland.
2023: Best Paper Award, IEEE IWCMC 2023, Morocco.
2023: EEECS Staff and Leadership Charter Award (Category: Ambition).
2023: CYBERUK Innovation Zone Exhibitor.
2023: Graduated from CyberASAP programme.
2022: Queen's Merit Award for Fellowship (FHEA).
2022: CyberASAP'22 - Cyber security academic startup.
2021: Co-Chair, IEEE UK and Ireland Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
2021: Elevated to Senior Member, IEEE.
2021: BCS Accreditation Liaison.
2021: Racial Equity Network School Co-Champion.
2020: Best research paper award for work published during PhD (2016) from Thapar University (Alma mater award).
2020: IEEE ComSoc: My Article included as one of the Best Readings in UAV Assisted Wireless Networks, Topic: Interference Mitigation and Drone Deployment.
2020: Appointed Associate Editor: IET Networks.
2020: Appointed Academic Editor: Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (WCMC).
2019: Appointed Associate Technical Editor: IEEE Communications Magazine.
2019: Appointed Associate Editor: IET CAAI TRIT.
2019: One of my books, “5G Enabled Secure Wireless Networks,” is included in the 2019-IEEE Comsoc Information Security Technical Committee's report (ICC’19).
2019: Top 1% reviewers in Cross-Field (Publons).
2019: Recognized (Outstanding) Reviewer Award- JNCA, FGCS, Physical Communications, Computers, and Electrical Engineering, PMC Elsevier.
2018: Recognized Reviewer Award- Physical Communications, Computers, and Electrical Engineering, PMC, Computer Networks, Information Sciences, Heliyon, Applied Computing and Informatics, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture-Elsevier, IJCS-Wiley.
2018: One of my papers in CCPE, Wiley, "Cooperative frameworks and network models for flying ad hoc networks: a survey," was among the top 20 most downloaded articles between 2016 and 2018.
2018: One of my papers in JNCA, Elsevier, "Intelligent deployment of UAVs in 5G heterogeneous communication environment for improved coverage," had the most social media attention in 2017 and 2018.
2017-2018: International research travel grants: JEJU-03'17, US-05'18, and JEJU-10’18.
2017: Best paper award, ICCMIT 2017, Poland.
2017: Best paper award, CISC 2017, South Korea.
2017: Best paper award, EAI-IoTaas 2017, Taiwan.
2016: Current Erdős Number: 5.
2013-2015: Chair- ACM Student Chapter, Thapar University (January 21, 2013 - November 30, 2015).
2015: Poster selected amongst the top 9 in the area of networks at ACM annual event (IRISS'15).
2015: Awarded Official ACM-Membership Ambassador Certificate.
2015: National research travel grants: IEEE ICECS (Coimbatore-02’15), ACM Annual Event (Goa-02’15), and ACM Security Symposium (Delhi-02’15).
2014: Awarded Official ACM-Membership Ambassador Certificate.
2012: Qualified GATE'12 (Admitted to the Ph.D. program at Thapar University).
2011-2012: University Merit.
2011: TGMC IBM Student Ambassador.
2009-2011: Best project awards (Industrial Trainings).
2008-2011: Recipient of Merit-Scholarship from the Government of India (State: Punjab).
2005-2006: Sports Scholarship for the year.

Vishal Sharma is a Senior Lecturer (~Associate Professor) in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EEECS) at the Queen's University Belfast (QUB), Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Before coming to QUB, he was a Research Fellow in the Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD) Pillar at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Singapore, with Prof. Paweł Szałachowski and Prof. Jianying Zhou, under a project entitled future-proof blockchain, funded by MoE-Tier 2 grant, Singapore. Before joining SUTD, he worked as a Research Assistant Professor under Industry-Academia Cooperation Foundation in the MobiSec Lab. at Soonchunhyang University with research sponsored by ETRI-Korea, NRF-Korea, IITP-Korea, MSIT-Korea, and AFOSR-USA. He was a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Ilsun You in the Information Security Engineering Department at Soonchunhyang University in association with Soongsil University, South Korea. Before this, he worked as a lecturer in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Thapar University, India. 

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