Sandhya Shekhar is the Chief Executive Officer of IIT Madras Research Park. A University rank holder from Madras University, Sandhya did her management studies at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and earned her Ph.D from IIT Madras, with her dissertation on " Knowledge Transfer in Virtual Organizations " winning the international award for Outstanding Doctoral Research from the European Foundation for Management Development and Emerald.

In her previous assignment in the industry, Sandhya was a Director with Gartner Inc. Asia Pacific region. She set up the consulting practice of Gartner in India. Earlier she has held positions as Chief Technology Officer of BconnectB.com, a B2B solution provider, Head of Knowledge Management Research in Aptech Ltd., and Group Consultant in the software division of NIIT Ltd. Her key focus areas have been IT driven Business Strategy, Enterprise Solutions, Data Analytics, Software Engineering, E-learning and Knowledge Management. Her current areas of interest include Virtual Organizations, Innovation and Sustainability.

Her papers have been presented and published in several international conferences and journals. Book publications include " Knowledge Management-Enabling Business Growth, " Tata McGraw Hill (which was the first Indian book on KM), " A metamorphosis of educational institutions through Research Parks ", Macmillan.