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.