Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan is a professor of Vision science, physics, ECE, and Systems Design engineering at the University of Waterloo. Previously, he was at University of Missouri. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985.

He has served as chair of education for the Society, a member of the board of directors, technical editor for optics letters, OPN, and others. He is also a founding member of the Active Learning in Optics and Photonics program of UNESCO. He has published widely in various areas, run a multi-disciplinary lab at Waterloo, and has been a visiting professor at many places including University of Michigan, Indian Institute of Technology, and New Delhi.

He received the 2013 Esther Hoffman Beller Medal. He has also received the SPIE Educator award. In addition to being a Fellow of the Society, he is also a Fellow of APS, SPIE, AAAS, and IoP.