Prof. Naik has worked on research and development using lasers, initially at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai (1982-1990) and later at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore (1990-2019).

 

He has successfully led projects leading to making the highest power laser (1 TW) in the country and also the first X-ray laser (46.9 nm) in the country.

 

He has worked on various research applications of high power ns lasers, especially the one related to Inertial Confinement Fusion.

 

He has worked on research with ultra-short pulse (25 fs), ultra-high intensity (10^20 W/cm^2) lasers for research applications like accelerating electrons with laser light to GeV energy, accelerating protons with lasers to few TeV energy, production of high order harmonics of lasers (up to 91st) etc.

 

He was also heading the Indus synchrotron facility (Indus-1 and Indus-2) for some time, which is a unique national user facility in India for advanced materials science research and development. 

 

Prof. Naik was also the Chairman of the Project Management Board of the LIGO-India Project (a mega-project on Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory coming up at Aundha, Hingoli in Maharashtra), from Sept. 2016 to March 2019.