Venkatesh Raman obtained his PhD from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and was a faculty member in the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, from 1991-2024. His primary research interests are in the area of data structures and algorithms, in particular in succinct data structures and parameterized and exact algorithms. He has co-edited four volumes of Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and he is on the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Discrete Mathematics. He has organized or participated in several faculty development programs on algorithms in institutions all over the country.

He has been on the ACM-India council since 2016, where he served as Vice-President from 2018-20, Secretary/Treasurer from 2020-22 and President from 2022-24. He played key roles in the initiation of ACM-India programs like summer/winter schools, conferences on Computational Thinking in Schools and in the revamped versions of the COMPUTE conference and ARCS symposium for PhD students.