Chandra Nair completed his undergraduate studies at the Indian Institue of Technology (IIT), Madras in electrical engineering graduating in 1999. Concurrently, Nair also completed the four-year nurture program in Mathematics at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) under the auspices of the National Board of Higher Mathematics (NBHM). He received his Masters (2002) and his PhD (2005) in electrical engineering from Stanford University. Following a postdoctoral position in the theory group at Microsoft Research, Nair joined the IE department faculty at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.