Before joining Microsoft, he was the William K. Lanman Jr.

The ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) presented its 2011 Knuth Prize to Ravi Kannan for developing influential algorithmic techniques aimed at solving long-standing computational problems.

[2] He also served on the Mathematical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2012 and 2013.

He received his PhD in 1980 at Cornell University under Leslie Earl Trotter, Jr.[3] His research interests include Algorithms, Theoretical Computer Science and Discrete Mathematics as well as Optimization.

His work has mainly focused on efficient algorithms for problems of a mathematical (often geometric) flavor that arise in Computer Science.