Mak Sharma

Mak has an international reputation for his extensive work on the use of Vendor Resources and embedding these into various qualifications. He has worked to engage with 10 of the largest IT companies including Cisco, Microsoft, SAS and Oracle to provide a rich set of problem-based learning throughout computing, communications and engineering courses.

While Head of the School of Computing, he provided leadership and strategic direction for a business worth in excess of £10m across the computing and electronics communications disciplines, through contract fulfilment, research and high quality academic delivery. Specifically, Mak managed development and delivery across 11 courses such as Computer Science and Computer Games Technology for content including game engine programming, Human Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence. The success of this work was recognised in 2017, when Mak was appointed Professor of Computer Science Education.

Over the last five years, based on the technologies used on these courses, Mak has led the development and delivery of 12 contracts valued at over £1m. He now spends his time leading the Cloud Computing Centre to deliver courses in Computer Networks and Security and Cloud Computing-related modules.

He has been instrumental in leading the development of content for modules such as Cloud Infrastructure and Services, Infrastructure Storage and Management, Software Defined Networks and Intelligent Sensor Systems.

A former hardware design engineer and software design engineer dealing with special applications, he has worked with a number of organisations to provide a set of problem-based learning programmes across computing and communications with employability as a major driver.

Mak started his working career with W&T Avery (GEC) in 1978 as an Apprentice Design and Development Engineer. He progressed through to a Hardware Design Engineer, then Software Design Engineer dealing with special applications.