He is a professor in the Department of Mathematics of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
[1] After obtaining an MSc degree from Madras University in 1980, Thangavelu moved to Princeton University and obtained the PhD degree in 1987 from there under the supervision of Elias Stein.
He returned to India and worked at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research until 1993 when he moved to Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore.
In 2005, he shifted to Indian Institute of Science and continues there as Professor in the Department of Mathematics.
Thangavelu has made significant contributions to the field of harmonic analysis on Euclidean spaces, Heisenberg groups and symmetric spaces, and also authored three monographs in these areas.