Gerard is a Full Professor in Telecommunications Engineering and has been Head of the School of Computing Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) from 2016-2023, which involved a range of senior management roles and responsibilities covering Teaching, Research, Innovation, and Outreach.
He holds a PhD in Self-Stabilising Protocols from Ulster University, aspects of which were completed with University College London (UCL), and he was one of the founding fathers of the Internet (Professor Jon Postel) as a Visiting Research Scientist at the DARPA/University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles.
Within his academic career, areas of research include Self-stabilising Networks, Wireless Sensor Clouds, UAV for Disaster Response Communications, ICT for the Rural Economy, Converged Network Management, Control Protocols for Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial Networks, delay-sensitive QoSLAs, energy-aware autonomic networking, and IoT-edge computing.
He has attracted several million pounds of external research and commercial funding and has advised governments on the allocation of funding to large-scale projects valued in total at approximately £3 billion. His industrial collaborations have included companies such as BT, Intel, ARM, Vodafone, IBM, Aviva, Ericsson, Siemens, InfoSys, Wipro, and SAP.
Professor Parr is an invited member of the EPSRC Peer Review College. His academic research collaborations include institutions such as MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, USC-ISI Los Angeles, University of Florida, University College London, Southampton, Surrey, QMUL, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, University of Oxford, St Andrews, Exeter, Lincoln, Lancaster and Cambridge, as well as Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Indian Institutes of Technology in Mumbai, Madras, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mandi, and IISc Bangalore.
He was previously appointed as a Visiting Professor to the Science Foundation Ireland/CTVR at Trinity College Dublin and to the Emirates-BT Innovation Centre (EBTIC) at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He was the International Scientific Advisor to the UK EPSRC National Centre for Doctoral Training in Communications Engineering at the University of Bristol.
He was appointed as Senior Guest Editor for the prestigious IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communications (JSAC) for a Special Issue on Communications Challenges and Dynamics in UAVs. He has extensive experience working with developing economies, particularly India, where he was the UK Academic coordinator for the major EPSRC-DST India-UK Advanced Technology Centre in Next Generation Networks Systems and Services, which was the largest collaboration of its kind between the UK and India in the ICT sector, attracting a total investment of over £20 million and helping establish a Virtual Graduate Research School for 67 PhD students under the UKIERI Programme.
Presently, Professor Parr is working on the development of the East of England Smart Emerging Technologies Institute (SETI), one of the recommendations from the UK BEIS Science Innovation Audit, with colleagues from Essex, Cambridge, UEA, and BT Adastral. SETI will look at innovations in 5G, IoT, AI-Big Data/Cloud Computing, and Testbeds across a number of sectors, including Energy, Intelligent Manufacturing, AgriTech, and Smart-Supply Chains.
Gerard was awarded an MBE in the Queen's New Year Honours for 2018 for contributions to Telecommunications Infrastructure in Northern Ireland. During January 2020, Professor Parr was elected to the Strategic Advisory Committee for the UK Government UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) ICT Programme to assist with strategic developments, funding panels, and identification of funding priorities.
Most recently, Gerard has been successful in attracting Co-I funding for a 5-year EPSRC Next Stage Digital Economy Hub called DIGIT (Digital-Innovation-Growth-Impact-Transformation) valued at over £12 million, which will explore methodologies and business impact of Digital Transformation in Large Organisations. During 2021, Gerard was also successful as PI in attracting £1.4 million funding for the “UK-India Future Networks Initiative” with IISc Bangalore, IIT Delhi, UCL, Surrey, Southampton, and BT. Most recently, in December 2022, he was successful as a Co-PI on a bid to UKRI-ESRC concerning Digital Technology in Teacher Agency. The £5.3 million fund will support a total of nine projects. He is also a Member of the UKRI-EPSRC Digital Security & Resilience Advisory Group.
