[9][note 1] Sri Niwas, born on 4 July 1946 in Rakhat village of Gorakhpur district, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to Ram Adhar Pandey, did his early schooling at local schools to complete his intermediate course from Board of High School and Intermediate Education Uttar Pradesh before joining Banaras Hindu University for his college education from where he passed BSc hons degree in 1966 and MSc in geophysics in 1968.

[10] He enrolled for doctoral studies at the same university and secured a PhD in 1974 for his thesis, Theoretical treatment of some problems on electrical behavior of layered Earth system.

He served out his entire career at IIT Roorkee, holding such positions as a Lecturer (1977–79) and Reader (1980–91) before superannuating in 2011 as a professor.

In between, he served as a professor, chair of the Department of Geophysics and joint director of the Summer School[12] of Kurukshetra University from 1989 to 1992 on deputation and as a visiting professor at Federal University of Bahia during 2000–01.

[11] The researches of Niwas were focused on the geophysical problems with regard to their forward and inverse solutions and his pioneering work assisted in the electrical exploration of groundwater in alluvial terrains.