Sunil Khijwania received PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India in 1999. He visited Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Tokyo, Japan as a Monbusho Post-Doctoral Fellow during 2000-2002. Subsequently, he held Post-Doctoral Research Associate position at Mississippi State University, Starkville, USA during 2002-2004. In 2004, he joined Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati as an Assistant Professor, where he is Professor since August 2014. He was an academic visitor during 2008 and Visiting Assistant Professor during 2007 as well as 2006 at the department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.

His research is fundamentally focused on Fiber Optics and its applications. The application-oriented multidimensional research being carried out at the 'Fiber Optics Laboratory', which is established single-handedly by him at the Department of Physics, IIT Guwahati, infuses some of the key emerging technologies based on graphene, nano-photonics, plasmonics, speciality fibers and guided-wave all-optical devices to name a few. His laboratory was acknowledged for its research contributions as one of the prominent Fiber Optics Lab of India by the 2011 issue of international magazine 'Optics & Photonics News' published by Optical Society of America, USA.

Presently, research & development at his research group is predominantly focused on to the design and development of Smart Optical Fiber Sensors (OFS) for real-field applications. Dominant multi-disciplinary applications of fundamental and advanced research, being carried out by his research group, span Civil and Mechanical Engineering applications (such as, Structural-Health-Monitoring), Environmental Engineering (air/water contamination detection and monitoring etc.), biomedical engineering to name a few. Currently he is involved in developing Smart Optical Fiber Sensors for vast range of applications, employing one or combinations of Graphene, Localized-surface-plasmon-resonance (LSPR), Specialty fiber (Photonic Crystal Fiber and Bragg Fiber), Fiber Bragg gratings/Long Period gratings, Nano-photonics (Optical fiber nano-wire etc.), and of course Conventional fiber optics techniques.

He has published over 110 papers in journals and conference proceedings. His work has been well cited with total citations over 1500 with the maximum citation for a single paper being over 300. He has co-authored six book chapters and co-edited one book on experimental fiber optics. He had organized  PHOTONICS 2010, an international conference on fiber optics and photonics.

Prof. Khijwania is also a thinker and motivational speaker for students and teachers. He has delivered numerous motivational and induction lectures in national seminars/workshops. He has served in various committees of MHRD, AICTE and UGC. He has played instrumental role in shaping up TEQIP III, the flagship project of MHRD and the World Bank as well as the second phase of GIAN. He is a senior member of Optical Society of America (OSA) as well as of IEEE Photonics Society. He is fellow and life member of Optical Society of India (OSI). He is also a member of the executive council of Optical Society of India (OSI).

He was Head, Center for Educational Technology (CET) during May, 2015 till August 2019 at IIT Guwahati. During this period, he was credited for his multidimensional visionary leadership. During these years, CET witnessed immense growth in terms of academic projects as well as infrastructural growth (state-of-the-art video studios, smart E-class room, video conference room etc.). Academic and outreach activities to empower teachers and UG/PG students grew exponentially under his leadership through key MHRD projects (NPTEL MOOCS, TEQIP II & III, GIAN, PMMMNMTT, ATAL Academy etc.) as well as in collaboration with RMSA, IAPT, KV Sangathan to name a few, taking a leading role at the national level. He is credited in developing novel active and sustainable learning model for better understanding of physics under the mission project of MHRD "PMMMNMTT".