Aravind Venugopalan

Aravind Venugopalan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Singular Photonics, an Edinburgh-based fabless semiconductor company developing next-generation SPAD image sensors. A PhD graduate of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering and a former Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow, he brings deep expertise in SPAD sensor design, custom integrated circuit development, and the translation of photonics research into commercial products.

Venugopalan's academic and research career was spent inside one of the world's leading groups in SPAD-based imaging — the CMOS Sensors and Systems Group led by Professor Robert Henderson at the University of Edinburgh. That environment, which pioneered the time-of-flight sensors now embedded in over a billion smartphones, gave him direct experience with the engineering challenges at the heart of single-photon sensing: how to pack computation into the pixel, how to achieve low noise performance at scale, and how to make sensors that can be manufactured using standard semiconductor processes rather than bespoke fabrication routes.

As CTO of Singular Photonics, he leads the technical development of the company's sensor portfolio, including the Sirona and Andarta SPAD sensors, and the next-generation Litavis device. The company's sensors are designed to perform complex computations directly at the pixel level — enabling simultaneous capture of spatial and temporal data, real-time photon counting, and autocorrelation — capabilities with applications across scientific instrumentation, medical imaging, autonomous navigation, and quantum technology. Singular has secured partnerships with AMS Technologies and Meta, and backing from the Scottish Venture Fund, Cambridge Angels, and Old College Capital.