Professor Ramanath received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1997. His doctoral work won him a Materials Research Society Graduate Student Award (now known as the Gold Award). He obtained his B.Tech. in Metallurgical Engineering from the IIT, Madras, India, and his M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He was a staff member at Novellus Systems, CA, and a Visiting Scientist at the Physics Department of Linköping University, Sweden, before he joined the Rensselaer faculty in Fall 1998 as an Assistant Professor. He became a tenured Associate Professor in 2003, and was promoted to full Professor in 2006. He was named John Tod Horton Professor in 2013. 

His research focuses on developing a fundamental understanding of structure-processing-property relationships in molecularly-tailored inorganic thin film and bulk nanomaterials and interfaces, and harnessing them for energy and electronics applications. 

Professor Ramanath has co-authored 185 journal articles (Google Scholar h-index 53, ~12000 citations), one book chapter, and holds 9 US patents. He has delivered more than 235 invited/plenary/keynote talks worldwide, and has organized several international symposia and workshops for MRS, AVS and TMS. 

He co-founded ThermoAura Inc, served as the Director of the NY State Center for Future Energy Systems and an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology (2003-15), and is an Editorial Advisory Board member for Journal of Experimental Nanoscience. 

Honors and awards include Fellow of the Materials Research Society (2018), Fellow of the American Physical Society (2017), Senior member IEEE (2017), Fellow of the American Vacuum Society (2013), Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2013), Brahm Prakash Visiting Professorship, IISc Bangalore, India (2013), Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (2004), Professor Bergman Young Scientist Award US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (2003),  National Science Foundation CAREER award (2000), and Materials Research Society Graduate Student Award for Outstanding Research (1996).   

Visiting appointments include Linköping University, Sweden; Dept. of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (2019-), PSG Institute of Advanced Studies, Coimbatore, India (2017-2019), RWTH, Materials Chemistry Department, Aachen University, Germany (2013-14), IISc, Bangalore, India (2013, 2006), Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany (2004-5), NIMS-ICYS/WPI, Tsukuba, Japan (2004, 2010) and University of Wollongong, Australia (2007)