The National Institute of Advanced Studies is an autonomous organisation. It is a registered Society under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act, 1960 on 20th June 1988. The Council of Management, the Academic Council and the Holding Trustees are the three authorities responsible for overall administration of the Institute.
Dr. Raja Ramanna was the Founder Director until his retirement in July 1997, and followed by Prof R. Narasimha until 2004, Dr. K. Kasturirangan during 2004-2009, Prof. V S Ramamurthy during 2009-2014 and Prof Baldev Raj during 2014-2018. Prof V S Ramamurthy was the interim Director during 10 January - 18 March 2018.
Sri S Ramadorai currently chairs the Council of Management. Dr Shailesh Nayak has taken over as the Director of NIAS on 19 March 2018.
NIAS Society has the Institute which has 4 schools - School of Social Sciences, School of Humanities, School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, and the School of Conflict and Security Studies and various programmes.
In 2017, NIAS Council of Management established a new Centre for Spatial Analytics and Advanced GIS (C-SAG) to mainly focus on development of knolwedge assets and intellectual property in Spatial Analytics and GIS. C-SAG has been accorded independent and autonomous functional status under the NIAS Council of Management.
