Nayar received a Bachelor of Engineering in electrical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology in Mesra,Ranchi India in 1984, and an Master of Surgery in electrical and computer engineering from North Carolina State University in Raleigh in 1986.
He is the Therapeutic Community Chang Professor of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. Nayar co-directs the Columbia Vision and Graphics Center and is the head of the Computer Vision Laboratory (CAVE), which develops advanced computer vision systems In February 2008, he was elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering.
He received a Doctor of Philosophy in electrical and computer engineering from The Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1991.
Nayar worked as a research engineer for Taylor Instruments in 1984. From 1986 to 1990 he was a graduate research assistant at The Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
In the summer of 1989, he was a visiting researcher at Hitachi Limited. in Yokohama, Japan. He joined the faculty of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University in 1991, and in 2009 he became chair of the department.
Nayar"s research is in the field of computer vision and focuses on the creation of novel cameras, physics based models for vision, and algorithms for image understanding.
His work is motivated by applications in the fields of machine vision, computer graphics, robotics, and digital imaging. Nayar developed the concept of computational cameras and is a leading researcher in the field of computational photography. His inventions include cameras that can capture 360 degree, high dynamic range, and three-dimensional images.
In 2009, he created the Bigshot Camera, a kid-friendly digital camera designed for education.
He also developed the Oren–Nayar Reflectance Model in collaboration with Michael Oren. As of November 2015, he has published over 350 scientific publications and holds over 30 patents on inventions related to imaging, computer vision and robotics.
His publications have been cited close to 33,000 times, and he has an h-index of 98. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 2008
Great Teacher Award, Columbia University, 2006
Keck Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, 1995
Fellow of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 1992
National Young Investigator Award, National Science Foundation, 1991
David Marr Prize, International Conference on Computer Vision, 1990, 1995.
Nayar has received several best paper awards for his scientific publications. Foreign his achievements, he has received the following honors: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2011 Alumni Achievement Award, Carnegie Mellon University, 2009 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award, 1994.
