Ravindranath earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Andhra University, received her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1981 from Mysore University, and worked at the National Cancer Institute in the US as a postdoctoral fellow. She joined the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, where she studied the metabolizing capacity of the human brain, focusing especially on psychoactive drugs and environmental toxins. In 1999, she helped Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India to establish National Brain Research Centre to co-ordinate and network neuroscience research groups in India.
