Ratnasingham Shivaji joined the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) on July 1, 2011 as Head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and served in this position until July 31, 2019. Beginning in January of 2012, he was named H. Barton Excellence Professor. Prior to joining UNCG, he served for twenty-six years at Mississippi State University (MSU), where he was honored as a W.L. Giles Distinguished Professor. He received his Ph.D in Mathematics from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1981 and his B.S (first class honors) from the University of Sri Lanka in 1977. In 2019, he was also named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is the recipient of the 2020 Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Southeastern Section Award for Distinguished University Teaching of Mathematics.  

Shivaji's area of specialization is partial differential equations, and in particular, nonlinear elliptic boundary value problems. His research work has applications in combustion theory, chemical reactor theory, and population dynamics, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Simon's Foundation. Currently, he is serving as the PI on an NSF Math Ecology grant. He has authored one hundred and eighty-eight research papers. He is a member of the Editorial Board of several mathematics journals. To date, he has directed one postdoctoral student, twenty Ph.D. students (19 graduates, 1 current), sixteen Masters' graduates, and thirty-three undergraduate research students (29 graduates, 4 current).