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 ().
Cham has been responsible for developing and growing ABCE's activities in India. He has played a major role in developing the Munjal 黑料吃瓜网 Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship ( ) at Ludhiana, India: a partnership between 黑料吃瓜网 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聽Enterprise across the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment.
Cham founded and led聽黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 DMTLab聽between 2009-2022 with specialisms in Image, Audio and Video Processing, and Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Cham joined 黑料吃瓜网 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聽. He has also supervised around a dozen PhD students and published around 100 research papers.
Prior to joining 黑料吃瓜网 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.
Areas of Expertise
- Industry/University Collaboration
- Solar Irrigation
- Microgrids
- Climate Change Mitigation
- Industrial Applications of Digital Technology
- Virtual and Augmented Reality
- Digital Image and Video Technologies
- Digital Audio Technology
- Multimedia and Web Technologies
- Programming and Software Engineering
Qualifications
- BSc Physics 鈥� University of Manchester
- MSc Solid State Physics 鈥� University of London
- PhD Physics 鈥� Aston University
Memberships
MIET
Research
- Solar Irrigation
- Microgrids
- Climate Change Mitigation
- Industrial Applications of Digital Technology
Publications
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Saha, C. K., Niloy, S., Rashid, M. H., Al-Amin, A. K. M., Rahman, A., Huda, M. S., Athwal, C., & Melville, L., 鈥淪easonal and spatial assessment of solar irrigation pump energy generation, utilization, and surplus potential in Bangladesh鈥�. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual International Meeting (AIM), Indianapolis, USA, July 2026.
- Dhundhara, S., Gueniat, F., Athwal, C., Melville, L., Yadav, H., Shishank, S., Sandhu, N., and Rahman, K., 鈥淭echno-Economic Evaluation of Battery vs. Biogas Backup for Solar Irrigation Pumps,鈥� 2nd International Conference on Sustainability, Innovation, and Society (IEEE ICSIS 2026), Valencia, Spain, June 2026.
- Yadav, H., Shishank, S., Sandhu, N., Melville, L., Gueniat, F., Athwal, C., Dhundhara, S., Rahman, K., and Khan, M., 鈥淎ssessing Groundwater Safety Efficiency District-Wise in Bangladesh 鈥� A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Study.鈥� DEA Workshop: Efficiency and Productivity Assessment in Higher Education and Public Services: DEA, Machine Learning, and AI, Aston University, Birmingham, UK, April, 2026.
- Rahman, K., Melville, L., Yadav, H., Shishank, S., Sandhu, N., Gueniat, F., Athwal, C., & Dhundhara, S., 鈥満诹铣怨贤� Smart SIP Team Research to Drive Sustainable Agriculture in Bangladesh.鈥� Celebrating 25 Years of Collaborative Research on Rice and Sustainable Agriculture, hosted by Queen鈥檚 University Belfast. 2025.
- Saha, C. K., Melville, L., Athwal, C., Gueniat, F., Sandhu, N., Shishank, S., Rahman, K. M., Rahman. A., Al-Amin, A.K.M.A., Rashid, M. H., Huda, M. S., 鈥淪MART-SIP+ - Approaches to Downstream Energy Utilization from Solar Irrigation Pumps in Bangladesh.鈥� Compendium of Abstracts and Souvenir, International Agricultural Engineering Conference (IAEC) 2025, Kathmandu, Nepal, P-47.
- Athwal, C., 鈥淪olar Irrigation Pumps: Driving Sustainable Electrification of Agriculture.鈥� 3rd International Conference on Computational Science and Management (ICCSM 2025), Panipat, India, April 2025
- Athwal, C., 鈥淗arvesting Solar Energy in the 21st Century鈥�. G20 Youth International Seminar, Chandigarh, India, 2023
- Athwal, C., Singh, M. (Ed.), McCabe, S. (Ed.), & Nielsen, B. (Ed.) (2023).聽鈥淪olar villages 鈥� a smart sustainable future for rural India鈥�. In聽India at 75, Thoughts and Reflections聽Bite Sized books.
- Athwal, C. 鈥淪olar Village Microgrid Proposal: Overview and Potential Benefits鈥�. UKIERI Workshop on Solar pump-based village microgrids-potential for tackling the energy/water/food nexus in Punjab, Chandigarh, 2022
- Cham Athwal, Maite Frutos-Pascual and Ian Williams, 鈥淎pplications of Augmented Reality in Manufacturing鈥�. In Innovation in manufacturing through digital technologies and applications: Thoughts and Reflections on Industry 4.0. Belmont Press. ISBN 9781527229839
- Aneiba, Adel and Shah, Hanifa and Athwal, Cham (2018) 鈥淚nnovation in manufacturing through digital technologies and applications: Thoughts and Reflections on Industry 4.0.鈥� Belmont Press. ISBN 9781527229839
- Randall, I Williams, C Athwal. "A Predictive Approach to On-line Time Warping of Motion" IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2017
- Ward D., Enderby S., Athwal C., Reiss J., 鈥� Real-time excitation based binaural loudness meters鈥�,聽 Proc. of the 18th Int. Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-15), Trondheim, Norway, Nov 30 - Dec 3, 2015.
- Hough, G., Williams, I., Athwal, C. 鈥淔idelity of Bimanual Interaction in Mixed Reality鈥�, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics , vol.12, no.99, pp. 1377-1389, 2015
- I. A. MacLachlan, M. K枚k眉er, C. Athwal, P. Jan膷ovi膷, (2015) 鈥淭owards the identification of Irish traditional flute players from commercial recordings,鈥� Fifth International Workshop on Folk Music, Paris, June 2015
- Hough, G., Williams, I., Athwal, C. 鈥淢easurements of Live Actor Motion in Mixed Reality Interaction.鈥� IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. Munich, Germany. 2014.
- Hough, G., Williams, I., Athwal, C. 鈥淢easurement of Perceptual Tolerance for Inconsistencies within Mixed Reality Scenes.鈥� IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. Munich, Germany. 2014.
- M. K枚k眉er, P. Jan膷ovi膷, I. A. MacLachlan, C. Athwal, (2014) 鈥淎utomated detection of single- and multi-note ornaments in Irish traditional flute playing,鈥� The 15th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR), Taipei, Taiwan, Oct. 27-31 2014.
- M. K枚k眉er, D. Kearney, I. A. MacLachlan, P. Jancovic, C. Athwal, (2014) "Towards the creation of digital library content to study aspects of style in Irish traditional music," The International Digital Libraries for Musicology workshop (DLfM), London, UK, Sept. 2014.
- M. K枚k眉er, I. A. MacLachlan, P. Jan膷ovi膷, C. Athwal, (2014) 鈥淎utomated detection of single-note ornaments in Irish traditional flute playing,鈥� Fourth International Workshop on Folk Music, Istanbul, Turkey, Jun. 6-7, 2014.
- Ward, D. ; Athwal, C. ; Kokuer, M., 鈥樷��,IEEE Workshop on 2013, DOI: 10.1109/WASPAA.2013.6701884
- Barbosa, I.B. , Theoharis, T. , Schellewald, C. , Athwal, C., 鈥樷��, IEEE Sixth International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS), Arlington, VA , 2013, DOI: 10.1109/BTAS.2013.6712687
- Sean Enderby, Zlatko Baracskai and Cham Athwal, 鈥楳ethods for real time harmonic excitation of acoustic signals鈥�, Proceedings of the Sound and Music Computing Conference SMC 2013, Stockholm, Sweden, p 27-33, 2013.聽Download at聽
- Islah Ali-MacLachlan, Munevver Kokuer, Peter Jancovic, Ian Williams, Cham Athwal, 鈥� Quantifying Timbral variations in Traditional Irish Flute Playing鈥�, Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Folk Music Analysis (FMA2013), Amsterdam, Netherlands, p7-13 , June 2013. Available at http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/math/2013-0604-200726/fma2013_proceedings.pdf
- Stables, R. and Athwal, C., 鈥淟arge-Scale Capture of Producer-Defined Musical Semantics鈥�, Semantic Media Network: Workshop at The British Library, London, UK. 2013.
- Andrew Thomas, Hanifa Shah, Philip Moore, Cain Evans, Mak Sharma, Sarah Mount, Hai V. Pham, Keith Osman, Anthony J. Wilcox, Peter Rayson, Craig Chapman, Parmjit Chima, Cham Athwal, David While, 鈥淐hallenges and Opportunities for the Future of iCampuses鈥�, Computer Science, Vol.14, No 1, 2013
- Athwal C, 鈥淒etection of deformable structures in video by polynomial fitting using efficient hough transform鈥�. Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 聽LNCS 7425, 2012
- Hough G, Athwal C & Williams I, 鈥� Advanced occlusion handling in virtual studios鈥�,聽 Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 聽LNCS 7425, pp. 287鈥�294, 2012
- Stables R., Kokuer, M., Athwal, C.,"Objective Evaluation of Naturalness in Singing Voice Synthesis." UKSpeech, Birmingham, UK. 2012.
- Stables R,聽 Athwal C聽 & Cade R, "Drum Pattern Humanisation Using a Recursive Bayesian Framework",聽 Audio Engineering Society ( AES) 133rd Convention, San Francisco, 2012
- Ward D, Athwal C & Reiss J, "Automating time varying gains in multi-track mixing using a model of loudness and partial loudness", Audio Engineering Society ( AES) 133rd Convention, San Francisco, 2012
- Stables R,聽 Athwal C聽 & Bullock J,聽 鈥淔undamental Frequency Modulation in Singing Voice Synthesis鈥�, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, March 2012
- Hough G, Athwal C and Williams I, 鈥淪caMP: A Head Guided Projection System鈥�, ACM Designing Interactive Systems'12. Newcastle, UK, 2012
- A.M. Thomas, H. Shah, P. Moore, P. Rayson, A.J. Wilcox, K. Osman, C. Evans, C. Chapman, C. Athwal, D. While, H.V. Pham, S. Mount. 鈥淓-education 3.0 Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of iCampuses鈥�, CISIS-2012, The 6th International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems, Palermo Italy 2012
- Stables, R. and Athwal, C. 鈥淧robabilistic Models for Drum Pattern Humanisation鈥�, InterFace2012 Symposium, Birmingham, UK. 2012.
- Williams I, Athwal C and Foss J,鈥� Developing Real-time Virtual Environments from Video Data鈥�,IET Seminar on Video Data Analysis, IET, London 2011
- Stables R, Athwal C聽 & Bullock J, 鈥淭owards a Model for the Humanisation Of Pitch Drift in Singing Voice Synthesis鈥�, International Computer Music Conference (ICMC-2011), Huddersfield, July 2011
- Stables R & Athwal C, 鈥淭he Humanisation of Stochastic Processes for the Modelling of F0 Drift in Singing鈥�, Frontiers of Research on Speech and Music / Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval (FRSM /CMMR- 2011), Bhubaneswar, March 2011
- Elson, B., Athwal C., Reynolds P., 鈥淐reating the World of Augmented Dental Training鈥�, E-Learn 2009, World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government and Healthcare,
- Robinson J.E., Athwal C.S. and van Reeven V., 鈥淎nalysing Engine Behaviour Through High Speed Video鈥�, Engine Expo, Stuttgart, 2005
- Robinson J.E. and Athwal C.S., 鈥淢easurement of Accessory Drivebelt Oscillations via High Speed Imaging鈥�, Advanced Powertrain Control Symposium, Birmingham, 2004
- Athwal C S , Smith S, Vu H, 鈥淚ncubating Screen Media: Complete supply chain support for West Midlands screen-based media cluster鈥�, Creative Clusters Conference, Brighton, 2004
- Athwal C.S. and Robinson J., 鈥淪ynchronised Multimedia for Engineering and Scientific Analysis鈥�, Multimedia Systems Journal, 9, 365-377, 2003
- Taylor J F & Athwal C S, 鈥淯ser Driven Mass Customisation of Jewellery Products via 3D Visualisation鈥�, Logistics Research Network Conference, Birmingham, 2002
- Onifade B & Athwal CS, 鈥淢easuring the Success of Early Testing 鈥� Revisited鈥�, Test Congress 2000, London
- Onifade B & Athwal CS, 鈥淢easuring the Success of Early Testing 鈥�, BCS SIGIST Colloquium, London 1999
- J Robinson, M Dallaway, P Wellicome & C S Athwal, 鈥淐rash Data Presentation Leveraging Existing Data Storage鈥�, Society of Automotive Engineers, SAE 1998, Detroit
- Athwal C S, 鈥淰ehicle Mission Simulation: Usability and Flexibility鈥�, 15th International Electric Vehicle Symposium, EVS-15, Brussels, 1998
- C S Athwal, J Robinson & A Cole, 鈥淭he design and implementation of a multimedia system for the interactive and time synchronised analysis of vehicle crash tests鈥�, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1242,聽 79-94, 1997
- C S Athwal,聽 J Robinson & A Cole, 鈥淭he design and implementation of a multimedia system for the interactive analysis of vehicle crash tests鈥�, Eurographics UK Conference, Norwich, 1997
- J Robinson & C S Athwal, 鈥淢ultimedia Crashes鈥�, Computer Bulletin, Sept. 1996, p12-13
- M Dallaway, A Cole, J Robinson & C S Athwal, 鈥淎 Multimedia Presentation and Analysis System for Vehicle Crash Testing, Automobile Abstracts, June 1996, p1-5
- C S Athwal, A Cole & J Robinson, 鈥淪tate of the art system to acquire and present data from crashworthiness development programs鈥�, Airbag 2000, Karlsruhe, 1996
- M Dallaway, A Cole, J Robinson & C S Athwal, 鈥淪ystems to acquire and present data from crashworthiness development programs鈥�, Autotest 鈥�96, Barcelona, 1996
- M Smith & C S Athwal, 鈥淎 study of the use of cost effective multimedia in a manufacturing environment鈥�, Advances in Manufacturing Technology X1, Leicester, 1995
- C S Athwal & M Cassidy, 鈥淎 case study lead investigation into approaches towards the development of cal materials using multimedia鈥�, Hypermedia 鈥�95, Sheffield, 1995
- C S Athwal & J Robinson, 鈥淒emonstration of a Multimedia Teaching Package for Operating Systems鈥�, Developing Human Resources for Industry and Commerce, Coventry, 1995
- C S Athwal, 鈥淎pplication of Multimedia to Open Learning鈥�, Euroform Seminar on Open Learning (Cork) 1994
- C S Athwal, 鈥淢icrowave Tube Developments鈥�, EEV Internal Reports (Company Confidential), 1987-90
- C S Athwal, 鈥淒evelopment of Simulation Programs for Microwave Tubes鈥�, Lancaster University Microwave Research Group Reports 85/4, 86/2-4, 86/6, 87/1 (Company Confidential), 1985-87
- C S Athwal, K H Bayliss, R Calder & R V Latham, 鈥淔ield-induced electron emission from artificially produced carbon sites on broad area copper and niobium electrodes鈥�, IEEE Trans. Plasma Science, Vol. PS-13, 226-229, 1985
- C S Athwal, 鈥淟ocation of field-electron emission sites on large area surfaces鈥�, CERN-LEP-VA Report, 1985
- C S Athwal & W Weingarten, 鈥淐arbon particle induced electron loading in a superconducting cavity鈥�, CERN-EF Report, 1984
- C S Athwal & R V Latham, 鈥淪witching and other non-linear behaviour associated with prebreakdown electron emission currents鈥�, Journal of Physics D, Applied Physics 17, 1024-1043,聽 1984
- C S Athwal, 鈥淒evelopment of electrostatic precipitators鈥�, SERC Report, 1983
- C S Athwal, P F Coventry & J F Hughes,鈥� Implications of ion-wind and back-ionisation on precipitator performance鈥�, Inst. Phys. Conf. Ser. No. 66, 167-172, 1983
- N K Allen, C S Athwal & R V Latham, 鈥淎 high resolution electron spectrometer facility for studying the spectra of microscopically localised field emission sites on planar cathodes鈥�, Vacuum, 32, 325-332, 1982
- C S Athwal, 鈥淎n investigation into the nature of electron emitting sites on broad-area metallic electrodes鈥�, PhD Thesis, University of Aston, 1981
- C S Athwal & R V Latham, 鈥淭he effect of the applied field on the energy spectra of electrons field emitted from microscopic sites on broad-area electrodes鈥�, Physica, 104 C, 189-195, 1981
- C S Athwal & R V Latham, 鈥淎 micropoint technique for identifying field emitting sites on broad area high voltage electrodes鈥�, Physica, 104 C, 46-49, 1981