He earned the Ph.D. (2005) degree in computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the B.Tech (honors) degree in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (1999). His research involves applying ideas from distributed computing, resource management, performance evaluation, and analytical modeling to the design and evaluation of data centers, networked systems, and operating systems. Urgaonkar is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2010) and a research award from Cisco (2007). With his co-authors, he has received the following awards or other special recognition: "Best Paper" at IEEE IISWC 2013, "Best Paper" at IEEE MASCOTS 2012, "Best Paper Nomination" at ACM Sigmetrics 2012, "Best Student Paper" at IEEE MASCOTS 2008, and "Best Student Paper" at IEEE ICAC 2005.