He is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a technical fellow and distinguished engineer on the Microsoft Azure Quantum hardware team.

[5][8][9] He joined Microsoft in 2005 as a visiting researcher in Redmond, Washington, and the faculty of UCSB in 2007 where he has served as technical fellow and professor of condensed matter theory through 2024.

[12][13][14][15][16][11][17][18] In 1996, Nayak and Wilczek discovered the type of non-Abelian statistics in paired quantum Hall states associated with Majorana zero modes.

[14][19] In 2006 and 2008, Sarma, Freedman and Nayak developed theoretical proposals for topological quantum computing based on non-abelian anyons.

[17][11] In 2011, Nayak, Parsa Bonderson and Victor Gurarie proved that quasiparticles in certain quantized Hall states are non-Abelian anyons, firmly establishing the mathematical foundation of these particles.