Research Interests

Software Engineering, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Human-Computer Interaction, Modeling and Simulation of Emergency Evacuation, Human Behavior Modeling, Agent-Based Modeling, Multi-Agent System, Gaming, Fuzzy Logic, Data Science and Data Visualization

Teaching

• COSC 829: Advanced Virtual Reality Systems
• COSC 565/465: Software Engineering I

Biography

Sharad Sharma is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Bowie State University. He is currently also serving as the graduate program coordinator for Department of Computer Science. He has received Ph.D in Computer Engineering from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI in 2006, M.S. from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI in 2003, and B. Arch from Birla Institute of Technolgy, Mesra, India in 1999. He has won the "2018 USM (University System of Maryland) Board of Regents "Faculty Award" for Excellence in Research and Scholarship. This award is given to a nominee from USM's 12 institutions, who shows evidence of exceptional scholarship and research that extends or deepens the bounds of knowledge and are recognized as innovations in the nominee's discipline. He has also won the "Outstanding Researcher Award" in year 2013, "Outstanding Faculty Award" in year 2012, "Outstanding Researcher Award" in year 2011, "Outstanding Publication Award" in year 2010, and "Outstanding Young Faculty Award" in year 2009 at College of Arts and Science in the Bowie State University. He has also received the "Outstanding Graduate/Professional Student Leadership Award" for the year 2005-2006 at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.

Dr. Sharma is an expert in modeling and simulation of human behavior for emergency response and decision making with focus on multi-agent systems (MAS), multi-user virtual reality (MUVR), and mobile augmented reality applications (MARA). He is interested in merging Data Science and Virtual Reality for Advanced Visualization. He specializes in performing virtual evacuation drills for evacuations and terror events in Multi‐User Virtual Reality (MUVR) environments such as subway, airplane, bus, VR city, and university campus. He has acquired several research grants from various funding agencies such a Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Army Research Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation. He has worked on a faculty research fellowship in the Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED) division in Army Research Laboratory (ARL) at Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), Aberdeen, Maryland. His continued collaboration with APG involves developing new data and visualization methods for course of action planning, visualization, training, and assessment. He is also exploring socio-cultural issues for emergency response and decision making in dense urban environments such as Megacity. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed conference, books, and journal articles in top conferences including IEEE (VR, ICMLA, CSCI, SSCI, SoutheastCon), SPIE, and IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. [Talk1, Talk2].

Dr. Sharma is the Director of the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the Bowie State University. He is currently exploring applications of virtual and augmented reality in several applications, including healthcare and evacuation. He has also developed and evaluated virtual reality Instructional (VRI) modules/Game-Theme based Instructional (GTI) modules for training and education in immersive and non-immersive environments. The VR laboratory focuses on using VR, AR, MR, XR as tool for learning, training, and education. The other projects in the lab include the development of CVE (Quality of care, Patient Safety, COVID-19 Testing, disaster response), human-centric situational awareness and big data visualization. Dr. Sharma was the Program Chair for the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE 2017), the Program Chair for the 27th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE 2018), and the Program Chair for the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE 2019) in San Diego, CA, USA on Sep. 30 - Oct. 2, 2019. He is a senior member of IEEE.