Dr. Ramesh Raghavendra holds a Ph.D from University of Twente, The Netherlands and three Masters degrees (M.Sc in Materials Sciences, MS in Metallurgical Engineering & MBA). He is currently the Centre Director of South Eastern Applied Materials Research Centre (SEAM) based within South East Technological University, Ireland. He is also the Founder of 3DWIT, an unique hands-on 3D printing training and skills centre providing support and education of industry needs as well as providing prototype development services in the fast-growing field of Additive Manufacturing (AM).  Ramesh has over 35 years of Research & Development Experience having worked in both Industrial and Academic environments during his career in the field of Materials Science & Engineering. He has managed to bring in funds in excess of €30m to the University during the last 12 years of service to the University.

Ramesh research background is in the areas of functional ceramics, glass and glass-ceramics, sintering of powder materials and more recently his research interests are directed towards Metal Additive Manufacturing. He currently supervises 4 Ph.D projects in MAM and jointly co-supervises another Ph.D with SETU, Carlow.  He holds patents in microwave processing of ceramic materials and in cofiring of ceramics. He has authored/co-authored more than 80 refereed journal publications and has presented in numerous conferences as Key note speaker. He collaborates with various academic institutions in Ireland, Europe, US, Canada and in India. He sits on the Executive Committee of I-Form which is an SFI Research Centre in the field of Advanced Manufacturing and is also funded investigator in the centre.

Over the last 25 years, Ramesh has made huge contributions in teaching/mentoring industry operatives starting from his days at Littelfuse Ireland (1997-2008). Being a Senior Materials Technologist and External Research Programme Manager for the company, Ramesh used to frequently lecture to both R&D and Product Engineering Staff on any materials related issue that arose, explaining the root cause and providing possible mitigation strategies. Ramesh routinely presented to Littelfuse Management on upcoming new process technologies relevant to company products.  In fact, Ramesh led a team which developed and built a continuous Microwave Processing furnace for the processing of variable resistors for the company and he holds a patent relating to processing of MW processing of passive devices (U.S. Patent No. 6399012).

Since moving from Littelfuse to relaunch and run SEAM at SETU 12 years ago, Ramesh's role has involved educating a multitude of engineers and scientists, from a wide range of sectors.  This involved the execution of a number of materials processing, characterisation and materials failure analysis projects and, in many cases, ended up in presenting the results to the senior management of these companies.  Each investigation carried out, leads to the opportunity to provide new knowledge to the industry behind the project.  Senior Management in the organisations request the knowledge sharing opportunity from SEAM and Ramesh has educated both senior management and their technical teams.

Ramesh, having launched SEAM in 2009, has been instrumental in establishing collaborations with over 250 Irish based industries and successfully managed to deliver over 3500 directly funded Industrial projects (short, medium and long term). Through these and state supported projects, Ramesh has managed to secure over 30 million euros in funding for SEAM-SETU. He has been Principal Investigator in numerous State & EU supported projects and has successfully Coordinated an FP7-SME project. Ramesh is also currently co-ordinating €2m prestigious Disruptive Technology Innovation fund project pertaining to ‘Enhanced Biocompatibility of AM manufactured Bio-Medical implants for improved clinical outcomes’. He is also the founder of 3DWIT, an unique hands on 3D printing training & skills center providing support and education of industry needs in this field. 

For his contribution to Industrial services, Ramesh has received numerous awards including the prestigious Knowledge Transfer Ireland Award 2015 under Industrial Consultancy Category and SETU Research Impact Award 2021. He has successfully led SEAM to win Irish Manufacturing Research Partnership Award 2020 with Boston Scientific Clonmel and Irish Lab Award 2020.