Khairul Munadi was born on 27 August 1971 in Seulimeum, Aceh Besar. He studied electrical engineering at the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology and earned his master's (2004) and doctoral (2007) degrees from Tokyo Metropolitan University in digital image processing. A full-time lecturer at Syiah Kuala University since 1999, he led the Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center (TDMRC) and was inaugurated as professor of electrical engineering in 2020. He later served as Education and Culture Attaché at the Indonesian embassies in Dili and London, became Director for Institutional Affairs at the Directorate General of Higher Education in 2024, and was confirmed as Director General of Higher Education in January 2025. In the 2026–2030 central board of Taman Iskandar Muda (TIM), he serves as a member of the Expert Board.