Dr. Ramanatha Ayyar started his carrier as demonstrator and rose to the position of Professor in Civil Engineering in 1965. He took his M. Tech in Soil Mechanics from University of Madras and Ph. D. from University of Roorkee. He was the Post Doctoral fellow during 1971-72 at Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Oslo, the Professor at the University of Zambia during 1977-79 and Visiting Professor, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria during 1983-84.

Prof. Ramanatha Ayyar has served as Principal of both the colleges at Trichur and Trivandrum and was the Director of Technical education during the period 1986-87. Later he served as Visiting professor at I.I.T., Madras and U.G.C. Emeritus Fellow. He is now the Honorary Director of CERCON, Institution of Engineers [India], Kerala and also consultant to various organizations on Soil problems.

Apart from being member of many academic bodies at the University and National level, Prof. Ayer has published 3 books on soil and about 70 papers in leading journals.