Professor Niknejad was born in Tehran, Iran. He received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1994, and his Master's and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997 and 2000. During his graduate studies, he authored ASITIC, a CAD tools that aids in the simulation and design of passive circuit elements such as inductors into silicon integrated circuits. ASITIC is actively used by industry and academic research and development centers.

He worked at Silicon Laboratories in Austin, TX, where he was involved with the design and research of analog RF integrated circuits and devices for wireless communication applications. His current research interests lie within the area of wireless and broadband communications. This includes implementation of integrated communication systems in silicon using CMOS and BiCMOS processes, computer-aided design and optimization of such systems, and numerical techniques in electromagnetics particularly as applied to the analysis and modeling of active and passive devices at microwave frequencies.