Aravind Venugopalan

Aravind Venugopalan is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Singular Photonics, the Edinburgh-based fabless semiconductor company building next-generation SPAD (Single-Photon Avalanche Diode) image sensors for 4D imaging. A PhD graduate of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, he is a former Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow — a programme designed to help academic researchers develop the entrepreneurial skills and commercial acumen to bring their technologies to market.

Venugopalan's technical foundation in SPAD sensor design and photonic systems traces back to the University of Edinburgh's CMOS Sensors and Systems Group, led by Professor Robert Henderson — one of the pioneers of SPAD digital imaging, whose work in 2005 produced some of the first SPAD image sensors in nanometer CMOS technology and whose time-of-flight sensors now perform autofocus-assist functions in over a billion smartphones globally. As CTO, Venugopalan is responsible for the technical direction of Singular Photonics' sensor architecture, including its proprietary approach to integrating advanced computation directly at the pixel level — enabling on-chip histogramming, autocorrelation, gated imaging, and ultra-high-speed operation.

Singular Photonics was incorporated in February 2024 and has already launched commercially available sensor products, attracted partnerships with leading instrumentation companies, and generated revenue within its first year. The company's sensors are designed for deployment in spectroscopy, fluorescence lifetime imaging, time-of-flight ranging, and quantum applications. Venugopalan has played a central role in establishing Singular Photonics within both the Scottish photonics research ecosystem and the Cambridge semiconductor commercialisation community.