Bhaskar Ramamurthi obtained his B. Tech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT Madras in 1980 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1982 and 1985 respectively. He was awarded the University of California Regents Fellowship during his doctoral studies.[3] After obtaining his doctorate, he worked at AT&T Bell Labs for two years before joining the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras in 1986, where he served as director from 2011 to 2022. He served as the Dean of Planning at IIT Madras before taking over the role of director in September 2011.[4]
His research interests are on topics in modulation and coding for mobile communications, wireless communication networks and design and implementation of wireless local loop systems. He is one of the founding members of the Telecommunications and Computer Networking Group (TeNeT) group at IIT Madras.[5] He is the principal architect of corDECT wireless local loop system and Broadband corDECT Wireless DSL System, widely deployed in India and 15 countries. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering since 2000.[6] He was elected as a Fellow of IEEE, effective from January 2015.[7] In 2025, Bhaskar Ramamurthi was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.[8]