Padma Raghavan is a computer scientist who works as vice provost for research at Vanderbilt University.

[1] She earned her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1991, with a dissertation on parallel algorithms for matrix decomposition supervised by Alex Pothen.

[2] She worked at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, then returned as a faculty member to Penn State in 2000.

At Penn State, she became a distinguished professor of computer science and engineering, associate vice president for research, and director of strategic initiatives.

[3] In 2002, Raghavan won a Maria Goeppert Mayer Distinguished Scholar award, funding her to visit Argonne National Laboratory.