Prior to taking up his role at Staffordshire, Professor Nawaz held two substantive roles at Manchester Metropolitan University. As the Director of Business Transformations Research Centre, he led nearly 200 researchers specialising in digital transformation, analytics, industry 4.0, transforming markets and transforming places. As the Director of Digital Technology Solutions, he led Met’s award-winning cross-faculty Digital Degree Apprenticeships portfolio delivering UG/PG programmes to nearly 900 apprentices from 70-plus leading technology employers. He was also the founding Head of the Apprenticeships Research Unit and the Text & Data Mining Lab at Manchester Met.
Professor Nawaz is a renowned expert in industry-academia co-creation, especially for high impact work-integrated programmes such as Degree Apprenticeships. He has advised on the establishment and launch of such programmes in Spain, New Zealand, Canada and Pakistan. He has addressed the Westminster Education Policy Forum twice and has been commissioned by the QAA to systematically analyse the Degree Apprenticeships pedagogies across English universities and advise the sector on best academic practices.
Professor Nawaz is also a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence and Digital Education. He holds several adjunct professorships and scientific directorships across Asia and North America. He sits on the boards of research and charitable organisations like the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence (Pakistan), TechSkills (UK), and NTF (UK), and has advised national policy organisations including the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Science and Technology (Pakistan). He has authored over 150 peer-reviewed research articles and his career grant capture stands at over £14 million. He has graduated 19 PhD students so far. According to Google Scholar, he is among the top-10 most cited scholars in the world in the fields of Digital Transformations, Applied Artificial Intelligence, and Educational Data Science.
In the past, he has held senior leadership positions in the private further and higher education sector and was an army officer before that.