[3] Prior to joining Rice, he was the Henry Burlage Professor of Material Sciences and Engineering and the director of the NYSTAR interconnect focus center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute until 2007.

[5] Ajayan was born on 15 July 1962 at Kodungallur, a coastal town in Thrissur district, in the Indian state of Kerala, to Malayali parents Pulickel Madhava Panicker, a telephone mechanic, and Radha, a teacher at the local school.

Ajayan's research interests are broad, focusing on nanomaterials development for a variety of applications such as energy storage, composites, electronics and sensors.

Apart from leading a research group (~40 people, including post-docs, graduate and undergraduate students, and international visiting scholars), he focuses on teaching and lecturing around the world on nanotechnology.

In his role as an academic at Rice and RPI, Ajayan has been a major promoter of nanotechnology,[21] teaching various interdisciplinary courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, emphasising the changes occurring in the science and engineering curriculum.

Constantly travelling to expand the field, Ajayan's group has a large number of collaborators worldwide and he spends a good amount of time abroad and inside the United States.