Ved Chirayath is the Vetlesen Endowed Chair of Earth Sciences, a National Geographic Explorer, and the inaugural director of the Aircraft Center for Earth Studies (ACES) at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. Chirayath's research focuses on inventing, developing, and testing next-generation sensing technologies for studying the natural world. Ultimately, his aim is to extend our capabilities for studying and protecting life on Earth as well as to aid in the search for life elsewhere in the universe. Professor Chirayath leads a multi-disciplinary team developing new instrumentation for underwater, airborne, and spaceborne remote sensing and communications. He validates instrumentation through scientific field campaigns around the world, often in extreme environments that serve as analogs for planetary science and ocean worlds applications. Chirayath works to ensure our innovations, developed for exploration and discovery, are broadly available to the public. His team also develops machine learning algorithms to process big data on supercomputing facilities. Chirayath is the inventor of FluidCam, fluid lensing, MiDAR, NeMO-Net, and a plasma-actuated drone.

In 2021, Chirayath was one of 30 finalists of 12,000 applicants for the NASA Astronaut Candidate Class of 2021. In 2022, Chirayath received a NASA honor award for NeMO-Net, a global coral mapping AI and ongoing citizen science project.  In 2020, Chirayath received the AGU Falkenberg Award for “contributions to the quality of life, economic opportunities, and stewardship of the planet through the use of Earth science information and to the public awareness of the importance of understanding our planet.” In 2019, Chirayath's MiDAR invention was awarded a NASA Invention of the Year, chosen from among thousands of new technologies within the agency, for its novelty and potential broad applications to advancing the state-of-the-art in sensing. In 2017, Chirayath received the NASA Early Career Award in recognition of “significant advances in aquatic remote sensing technology.”

Chirayath received his BSc with honors, MSc, and PhD in Physics, Astrophysics, and Aeronautics & Astronautics from Stanford University after five years studying theoretical physics at Moscow State University in Russia.