Dr. Mukul Sharma earned his Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from University of Southern California in 1985. He joined the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin that same year.

Dr. Sharma researches natural gas engineering, injection water management, formation damage and petrophysics. He also researches surface and colloid chemistry as well as fluid flow in porous media as it relates to exploration and production of oil and gas. He has researched ways to best inject water into oil wells, a process which forces more oil out of the underground areas where it resides. Sharma has studied methods for combating fractured wells and oily water, both of which result in a decline in injection success. He also aims to improve oil recovery through his study of wetting and spreading (both of which are interactions between a solid and spilled liquid due to surface tension). He is interested in cleaning up damage caused by structural failures including wall-building filter cakes and perforations and preventing such failures by accounting for chemical effects in wellbore stability models.