He is a distinguished emeritus professor at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) where he was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Commercialisation from 2004 to 2019.
Shortly after his doctorate degree, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 6 months (1990-1991).
[1] While at UNSW he was named as the Node Director Designate, Sydney Node (2002-2003), and was appointed to the role of Vice President and Director of Sydney Research Lab (2003-2004) within National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia's national Centre of Excellence in information and communications technology, which became part of Data61 division of CSIRO.
[17][18] During the 1990s, Sharma had a very productive collaboration with Professor Sanjay Jain[19] that led to significant new results in E Mark Gold's paradigm of language identification in the limit.
[25] Through his policy papers and newspaper articles, Sharma has played a significant role in doctrinal advocacy at the intersection of research, entrepreneurship and economic development.