Kanpur : There are careers which advance by a straight road, and there are those which take the traveller from the classroom to the workshop, from the workshop to the public office. He received his MTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1988 and his PhD there in 1994. His academic training was in communications networks, a field that later grew central to mobile telephony and the internet.
Karandikar joined the Electrical Engineering Department of IIT Bombay. There he remained, on lien during later public appointments, for nearly three decades. His duties widened with time. He headed the Computer Centre, led the Electrical Engineering Department, served as the first Professor-in-Charge of the IIT Bombay Research Park, and became Dean of Faculty Affairs. His research dealt with wired and wireless networks, resource allocation, software-defined networking, and extending broadband to places where conventional infrastructure was costly.
Karandikar helped establish the Telecom Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI), the country’s telecom standards body, and served as its founding member and former chairman. His research also contributed to IEEE standards, including IEEE 1930.1 and IEEE 2061, the latter concerning architecture for affordable broadband networks. His team’s work on rural broadband received the Mozilla Open Innovation Challenge prize in 2017.
The institute expanded academic and research infrastructure, strengthened incubation, and advanced plans for a medical school devoted to medical technology. It pursued new research facilities, faculty expansion, industry partnerships, and international collaborations. IIT Kanpur records that its incubation efforts were consolidated under the Foundation for Innovation and Research in Science and Technology.
The Department also advanced a 1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Fund intended to support research in the private sector and deep-tech start-ups. Other programmes covered clean energy, green hydrogen, advanced materials, geospatial technologies, manufacturing and research infrastructure, and technology incubation. Telecommunications had carried Karandikar from research into standards and regulation; the directorship took him into institutional administration; the Science and Technology Department brought him into national research policy. In May 2026, he moved again, this time to NITI Aayog.
Read Also : Indian Seafarer Killed, 19 Others Rescued After Torpedo Attack On Vessel Near Strait Of Hormuz