About

Rajesh Sharma is a Professor and the lead of the Computational Social Science Group at Plaksha University, India, since February 2025. He also serves as the Program Chair for the Computer Science and AI specialization.

Prior to joining Plaksha, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia (Jan 2021 – Jan 2025), where he led the Computational Social Science Group. Before that, he worked as a Senior Researcher in the same institute (Aug 2017 – Dec 2020). From Nov 2016 to Jul 2017, he was a Research Fellow on the DEVELOP Project, collaborating with the University of Bristol, UK, and Queen's University Belfast, UK.

From Jan 2014 to Oct 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the SmartData Group at the University of Bologna, Italy. He earned his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in Dec 2013. Before his doctoral studies, he gained experience in both academia and industry—working as a Lecturer, completing an M.S. at IIT Roorkee, and serving as a Software Engineer at Cisco Systems, Bangalore, India, for around two years.

Adjunct/Visiting Professor position: Rajesh also holds adjunct and visiting professor positions at the 1) University of Tartu, Estonia, 2) IIT Ropar, 3) IIIT Delhi, 4) Lakehead University, Canada, and 5) Kyiv School of Economics, Ukraine.

Research Interests

At a broad level, Prof. Sharma’s research lies at the intersection of computer science and social science. He focuses on societal challenges such as polarization, echo chambers, misinformation, hate speech, and mental health. His work often examines social behavior as a core factor in designing effective computational solutions.

Publications

For a complete list of publications, please refer to his Google Scholar profile.