Projects per year
Personal profile
Research Interests
- Cyber Defence and AI Security
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
- Network and Wireless Security
- Distributed Ledger Technology
- Digital Twins
Achievements
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.
Particulars
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.
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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R3797ECS: Traceable and auditable procurement for net-zero processes
Sharma, V. (PI)
29/05/2025 → …
Project: Research
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R1588ECS: RapidRANDefender (Phase 2 of QRICSec: AI security for Open networks)
Duong, T. Q. (PI) & Sharma, V. (CoI)
14/10/2024 → …
Project: Research
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R1999ECS: QRICSec: AI security for Open Networks
Masaracchia, A. (PI), Duong, T. Q. (CoI) & Sharma, V. (CoI)
04/06/2024 → …
Project: Research
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R3511ECS: TUDOR: Towards Ubiquitous 3D Open Resilient Network
Duong, T. Q. (PI), Fahim, M. (CoI), Garcia-Palacios, E. (CoI) & Sharma, V. (CoI)
10/05/2023 → …
Project: Research
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R3500ECS: Exploring operational capabilities of Arm Morello for security configurations of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Sharma, V. (PI), Karakonstantis, G. (CoI) & McAllister, J. (CoI)
09/03/2023 → …
Project: Research
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6G-enabled integrated sensing and communications to tackle climate change: the geothermal sensing and monitoring model and its implications
Kumar Orappanpara Soman, S., Nguyen, M.-H. T., Sharma, V. & Dobre, O. A., Apr 2025, In: IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine. 32, 2, p. 204-212 9 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Carbon-aware edge computing for internet of everything networks: a digital twin approach
Huynh, D. V., Khosravirad, S. R., Sharma, V., Kim, J., Canberk, B. & Duong, T. Q., 24 Apr 2025, (Early online date) In: IEEE Internet of Things Journal. 12 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Edge intelligence: a deep distilled model for wearables to enable proactive eldercare
Fahim, M., Ahsan Kazmi , S. M., Sharma, V., Shin, H. & Duong, T. Q., 09 Jan 2025, (Early online date) In: IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile48 Downloads (Pure) -
Machine learning based physical layer security for detecting active eavesdropping attacks
Yin, C., Xiao, P., Sharma, V., Chu, Z. & Garcia-Palacios, E., 23 Jun 2025, (Early online date) In: IEEE Communications Letters. 5 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Sustainable business decision modelling with blockchain and digital twins: A survey
Wickremasinghe, G., Frost, S., Rafferty, K. & Sharma, V., 04 Jun 2025, (Early online date) In: Blockchain: Research and Applications. 100312.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review
Open Access
Prizes
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2021 EiC travel grant (Drones Journal)
Sharma, V. (Recipient), 08 Oct 2021
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Ambassador for ACM certificate
Sharma, V. (Recipient), 12 Aug 2015
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Ambassador for ACM certificate
Sharma, V. (Recipient), 15 Jan 2015
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Best Paper Award
Ak, E. (Recipient), Canberk, B. (Recipient), Sharma, V. (Recipient), Dobre, O. A. (Recipient) & Duong, T. Q. (Recipient), 01 Jun 2024
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Best Paper Award
Sharma, V. (Recipient), Srinivasan, K. (Recipient), Jayakody, D. N. K. (Recipient), Rana, O. (Recipient) & Kumar, R. (Recipient), 05 Apr 2017
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Activities
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Tutorial: Secure & Smart Distributed Computing with Blockchain, Agentic AI AND LoRaWAN
Sharma, V. (Presenter), Duong, T. Q. (Member), Olukoya, O. (Member), Abdul Majeed, A. (Presenter), Sandjaja, F. R. (Presenter) & Wickremasinghe, G. (Presenter)
19 Jun 2025Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation
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Pint of Science
Sharma, V. (Invited speaker), Sandjaja, F. R. (Invited speaker), Abdul Majeed, A. (Invited speaker), Megarry, M. (Participant) & Wickremasinghe, G. (Participant)
21 May 2025Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in Festival/Exhibition
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Balmoral Show 2025
Sharma, V. (Contributor), Sandjaja, F. R. (Contributor) & Wickremasinghe, G. (Contributor)
14 May 2025 → 15 May 2025Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in Festival/Exhibition
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Supply chain security and resilience - A roadmap of risk assessment, traceability, and digital twinning with Agentic AI
Sharma, V. (Keynote speaker)
25 Apr 2025Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited or keynote talk at national or international conference
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Distributed Ledger Technology Policy and QUB’s Blockchain initiative
Sharma, V. (Chair), Sandjaja, F. R. (Organiser), Abdullah, A. (Organiser), Abdul Majeed, A. (Organiser), Megarry, M. (Organiser), Wickremasinghe, G. (Organiser), Davis, M. (Organiser), Frost, S. (Organiser), Forde, T. (Organiser), Kerr, N. (Organiser), Fleming, B. (Organiser), Martinez-del-Rincon, J. (Member of programme committee), McWilliams, G. (Member of programme committee) & Rafferty, C. (Member of programme committee)
14 Feb 2025Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Press/Media
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The Balmoral Show - CISC Research@EEECS
15/05/2025
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Public Engagement Activities
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DroneVirus – What Made My Drones Go Rogue?
21/02/2025
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Public Engagement Activities
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Don’t let the drones out: A story of cyber welfare to cyber warfare
17/02/2025
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Expert Comment
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Frontier AI Safety & Policy Panel: Where We're at & Where We're Headed
30/10/2024
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Public Engagement Activities
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Who’s flying? Taming Drone Swarms and Avoiding Pitfalls of Rogue Behaviour
25/09/2024
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Other