Ashok is attached to the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras as a Professor, since 1990. Prior to which he was an Assistant Professor at IIT Madras (1981-1990) and Washington State University (1979-1981). He has made a unique contribution in the area of academic-industry interaction, in the area of Telecom and IT industry through advising industry giants (in India) on technology trends, research, product development and international collaborations.

He is a Member of Development Council for Telecom Sector, Ministry of Communications, New Delhi, since 2001 and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Delhi as of 1998. He is also a part of the working groups of the tenth Five year plans (Indian Government) for the IT sector and the Telecom sector (2002-2007). He is a founder director of the Communications Policy Research and the current Chair of the Board.

Ashok’s contributions in terms of research in the early part of his career were on the area of Surface Acoustic Wave Theory and Applications. Later he expanded his interests to the areas of Telecommunication and Computer Networks, Fibre Optic Communications and Optical Signal Processing. He has also been involved in product development through Telecommunications and Computer Networks Group (TeNeT) of IIT Madras faculty which includes corDECT Wireless in Local Loop (which is deployed in 11 countries), Direct Internet Access System and Fibre in the loop system. He has 6 patents to his name.

Ashok is also the recipient of the Padma Shree, an award given by the Government of Indian in recognition of the distinguished contributions to the country.