Ramesh joined University of California, Irvine as the first Bren Professor in Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences in 2005. Ramesh has been an active researcher in multimedia information systems, image databases, machine vision, and intelligent systems. While professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of California, San Diego, he founded and directed artificial intelligence and visual computing labs. He was also the founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE MultiMedia magazine and Machine Vision and Applications journal and serves on the editorial boards of several magazines in multimedia, business and image and vision processing. He has co-authored more than 250 research papers in well-respected journals and conference proceedings. Among his co-authored and co-edited books include Machine Vision, a textbook used at several universities. Ramesh has been elected Fellow of ACM, IEEE, IAPR, AAAI, and SPIE. He is the recipient of several awards including the ACM SIGMM Technical Achievement Award 2010.

Ramesh co-founded three companies (Imageware, Virage, and Praja), managed them in initial stages, and then turned them over to professional management. Currently, he is working with two early stage companies: mChron and Stikco. He enjoys working with companies, is involved in research, and enjoys writing. His current research is in experiential computing and its applications to Social Life Networks, particularly with emphasis on Middle of the Pyramid (MOP).