Dr. H.C. Kandpal received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Kumaun University, Nainital (Uttarakhand) in 1975 and 1980 respectively. Before his superannuation in Nov 2014, he worked for about 32 years in National Physical Laboratory (NPL), New Delhi, India.  At the time of superannuation, he was the Chief Scientist and Head Quantum Phenomena and Applications Division and the Optical Radiation Standard Section and was also Director Administration.

At CSIR-NPL, he established different standards of optical radiation namely absolute radiometers, variable temperature blackbody, primary standards of photometry and photon-correlation metrology. He research was in the fields of optical coherence, phase singularity and quantum optics and has done some basic experimental studies. The first experiment done by him on spectral switching has a wide citation and is being pursued for finding some technological applications.

He is Reviewer for Several of Optical Journals namely, Optics Communication, Optics Letters, Optics Express, Journal of Optical Society of America etc. He has published about 135 research papers, which have wide citations.

He supervised a number of students, for their doctoral work, who are professors at IITs and in several international institutions. Dr. Kandpal received the CSIR Young Scientist Award in 1990. He was elected as Fellow of National Academy of Science (FNASc) in the year 2009 and Distinguished Fellow of the Optical Society of India in 2020.  He is Fellow of Metrology Society of India and Laser Society of India.

He was chairman of various committees of the Bureau of Indian Standards and has been instrumental in developing several Indian Standards. He is Lead and Technical Assessor of the National Accreditation Board of Laboratories (NABL) and has played vital role in accreditation of several laboratories in the country. In addition he is active member of several international and national committees.

After supernnuation Dr. Kandpal is with Fiem Industries Ltd. Sonepat, Haryana where he is supervising the R & D activities on photometry.