Professor Cham Athwal
Cham Athwal is working part-time as a Professor in the School of Architecture, Built Environment, Computing and Engineering (ABCE). His current research interests are in Climate Change Challenges in South Asia, with a focus on the uptake, enhancement and scaling of Solar Irrigation. He is co-leading a UKRI funded project on the development, demonstration and scaling of solar irrigation pump based microgrids to power the electrification of agriculture in Bangladesh (www.smartsipplus.org).
Cham has been responsible for developing and growing ABCE's activities in India. He has played a major role in developing the Munjal BCU Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (www.MBCIE.org ) at Ludhiana, India: a partnership between BCU and the charitable foundation of the Hero Group of companies. He is also active in developing Teaching and Research partnerships with Universities throughout India.
Cham was Associate Dean, 2018-2023, with strategic and operational responsibility for Research and Enterprise across the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment.
Cham founded and led BCU’s DMTLab between 2009-2022 with specialisms in Image, Audio and Video Processing, and Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Cham joined BCU as a Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering in1990 and has since had a long history of applied research in industry collaboration projects. Funded by sources such as EPSRC, DTI, ERDF and EU R&D Framework, Cham has applied Digital Technologies in sectors including automotive, manufacturing, health, and creative industries. He has supervised numerous Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with awards including National Best Programme, 4* impact rating in REF2014 and selection as an exemplar impact case study. He has also supervised around a dozen PhD students and published around 100 research papers.
Prior to joining BCU his postdoctoral career has included Research Fellowships in the Engineering Departments at the Universities of Southampton and Lancaster. He also spent two years as a CERN Fellow in Geneva working on the development of the Large Hadron Collider, before leading a radar/microwave R&D group at GEC Ltd for three years.