Ravindra Anant Athale received his B.S. in 1972 from the University of Bombay and M.S. in 1974 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, both in physics. He received his Ph.D. in 1980 in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

From 1981 to 1985, he worked as a Research Physicist in the Optical Signal Processing section of Naval Research Laboratory. From 1985 to 1990, he was a Senior Principal Staff Member at BDM Corporation in McLean, Virginia, where he headed a group in Optical Computing and supported DARPA program in Strategic Computing. From 1990 to 2001, he was a faculty member in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at George Mason University, in Fairfax, VA. From 2001-2005, he was on assignment to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as a Program Manager in Photonics. At DARPA, he initiated programs in Chip-to-chip optical interconnects, computational imaging systems, and university centers in nanophotonics. From 2005 to 2012, he was Principal Scientist in the Emerging Technology Office at MITRE Corp., where he managed an IR&D portfolio in Emerging Technologies and led a group in computational imaging.

He is currently a Program Officer at Office of Naval Research managing research in imaging sensors, optical computing and nanophotonics. Dr. Athale was elected Fellow of the Optical Society in 1989. He has published over 50 journal papers including two invited papers in Proceedings of IEEE and holds several patents in the area of optical processing. Dr. Athale received Optical Society’s Robert E. Hopkins Leadership Award in 2005, and was awarded Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.