Director of IIT-Kanpur and one of India’s leading experts on telecommunications, was on Sunday appointed Secretary of Department of Science and Technology (DST), ending a 2-month-long stop-gap arrangement in the department.
Karandikar, 58, a widely regarded technologist who is respected across the scientific community, enters DST after a five-year stint at IIT-Kanpur. The DST Secretary position remained 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 famous 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 contributed for setting up 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.
Notably, 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.
