Late. Shri R Aravamudan was the first of Dr Vikram Sarabhai's handpicked engineers to join India's space programme in 1962. He was sent to NASA in Washington for training in rocketry and ground support. Later he became director of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in the early 1970s. In the 1980s, he became Associate Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. In 1989, he was made Director of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), SHAR. In 1994, he moved to Bangalore as Director of the U R Rao Satellite Centre .

During his tenure as Director of URSC from 1994 to 1997, seven satellite projects were designed and developed in the area of remote sensing and communication.

R Aravamudan, was a pioneer in the development of radars in ISRO. He was also responsible for initiating Systems Reliability Activity across ISRO.

He was the recipient of many awards for his outstanding contributions in the field of science and technology. These include The Aryabhata Award from The Astronautical Society of India (2009) and Outstanding Achievement Award of ISRO (2010).