Brains behind 5G rollout, IIT-Kanpur Director is Science & Tech Secy

The DST Secretary position had fallen vacant after the premature exit of S Chandrasekhar, who had decided to move out due to personal reasons. For the past two months, the position was held as an additional charge by Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology.

“It is a great opportunity to be able to work at the national level and I am thankful that the government has expressed confidence in me. I would like to work in the role to the best of my abilities,” said Karandikar, who is likely to hand over the change of IIT-Kanpur soon and move to New Delhi.

An electrical engineer from IIT-Kanpur, Karandikar is best known for his work on wired and wireless network technologies. He also completed his PhD from IIT-Kanpur in 1994. He has been one of the brains behind the introduction of 5G technology in the country. His team has worked on developing an architecture that can help provide “frugal 5G” connecting rural India to the network.

He is also working as a consultant for design and implementation of BharatNet, the government’s project to create broadband connectivity to rural India. With better connectivity in the country, the government is also able to provide services such as internet banking or tele-consultations from expert doctors at remote locations.

Karandikar spearheaded the efforts that led to the setting up of Telecommunication Standards Development Society (TSDSI), of which he was the founding chairman. He has also served as member of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, high-level forum on 5G and the 5G Spectrum Policy Task force.

Incidentally, he is the third scientist from IIT-Kanpur to have been appointed a Secretary in DST in recent times. Ashutosh Sharma, who preceded Chandrasekhar, also happened to be from the institute, and so did Sandeep Verma, a chemical biologist, who headed the Science and Engineering Research Board till a few months ago.

Karandikar has also worked with the high performance computing group of the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which is implementing the country’s National Supercomputing Mission that envisages a grid of over 70 super-computers across India’s academic institutions. He has more than 20 patents to his credit.