Saif's main research interests include, waveforms for sixth generation (6G) communication systems, wireless communication using large antenna arrays, coding and signal processing for wireless communication systems, information theory, and statistical signal processing.

Saif is a pioneer of Zak-OTFS modulation and Delay-Doppler signal processing which are considered to be pivotal for next generation communication systems. He has also authored a book titled, ``OTFS Modulation: Theory and Applications.

He currently holds the Jai Gupta Chair at IIT Delhi. He received the B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi, New Delhi, India, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree from the Electrical Communication Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 2010. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Communication Systems Division (Commsys), Electrical Engineering Department(ISY), Linkoping University, Sweden. He was an Assistant Professor at Commsys, from September 2011 to February 2013. He currently serves as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and in the past he has served as an Editor for the IEEE Wireless Communications Letters and Physical Communication journal (Elsevier). He holds nine granted patents (4 US and 5 Indian) in his area of research. He received the 2017 NASI Scopus Young Scientist Award and the Teaching Excellence Award at IIT Delhi for the year 2016–2017. He was also a recipient of the Visvesvaraya Young Faculty Fellowship from the Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India from 2016 to 2019.