Dr. Kandiyoti received his BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University (New York) (1965) and his PhD degree from Imperial College London (1969). He has served in the Chemical Engineering Departments of the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey, 1969-72) and Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey, 1974-80). He joined Imperial College London (1980), where he served as Professor of Chemical Engineering and co-ordinator of the Energy Engineering Group. On retirement (2008), he was appointed as "Distinguished Research Fellow" in the same department.

He has over 350 publications on (i) experimental reactor design for pyrolysis, gasification, and liquefaction and the thermochemical characterization of fossil fuels, biomass and waste, (ii) the chemical characterization of heavy hydrocarbon liquids and (iii) environmental aspects of power generation. He has also written on the geopolitics of transnational oil and gas transmission.