The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved the appointment of Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur to the post of Secretary, Department of Science & Technology (DST) from the date of assumption of charge of the post till the date of his attaining the age of 60 years or until further orders.

He is presently Director, IIT Kanpur and served as Dean (Faculty Affairs) during 2017-18 in IIT Bombay. Before joining IIT Kanpur as the Director in April 2018, he served as Institute Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He was also the Head of the Department during 2012-15 and the first Professor-in-charge of IIT Bombay Research Park.

Karandikar has been driving several large initiatives both at national and institutional level. At the national level, he was the Chairman of India's first Telecom Standards Development Organization (TSDSI). He is a member of Technology Innovations Group on 6G and chairs the 6G Spectrum Task Force setup by the Department of Telecom, Government of India.

Earlier, he had also chaired the 5G Spectrum Policy Task Force. For Rural Broadband, Abhay has been experimenting with TV White Space which has huge potential in providing broadband connectivity in rural and underserved areas of India and plan was to scale this deployment to more villages.

During 2014-16, he also led IIT Bombay's Research Park whose objective is to develop an ecosystem of innovation through industry-academia collaboration. He was also the Coordinator of National Center of Excellence in Technology for Internal Security (NCETIS). The Center is focussing on technology requirements of security agencies specially state and central police forces.