Bimal Roy received his PhD in Combinatorics and Optimization in 1982 under the supervision of Professors Ron Mullin and Paul Schellenberg. The title of his thesis was "On Isomorphic Subgraphs Having Minimum Intersections".
Bimal was an assistant professor at the State University of New York (Utica) from 1982 to 1984. In 1984, he joined the faculty of the Indian Statistical Institute, a prestigious university with campuses in Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore and Tezpur. In 2010, Bimal began a term as the Director of the Indian Statistical Institute. ("Director" is the equivalent of "President" in North American Universities.)
Bimal is regarded as one of the pioneers of Cryptology research and training in India. He is a founder of the formidable Cryptology Research Group at ISI, and has been the Founder-Secretary of the Cryptology Research Society of India since its inception in 2001. During his career at ISI, he supervised 14 PhD students and more than 50 Master's students. Bimal has developed cryptographic algorithms for several Indian government agencies including the Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO), Indian Navy, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and Bhaba Atomic Research Center (BARC), and has served as an adviser to Special Protection Group (SPG) and Police Wireless Communications for secured wireless communications. He served as Program Chair of the ASIACRYPT 2005 conference. He has also provided expertise on methodology and applications of statistics to the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), Reserve Bank of India, and the Ministry of Labour in conducting nationwide surveys, data analysis and inference.