The Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) is the professional society for biomedical engineering and bioengineering. Founded in early 1968, the Society now boasts more than 4,000 members and is growing. The Pritzker Distinguished Lectureship Award is awarded each year to recognize an individual's outstanding achievements and leadership in the science and practice of biomedical engineering. The awardee is expected to deliver a plenary lecture at the Annual Meeting in the fall and publish the text of the lecture in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering. A very important purpose of the lecture is to critically review a field of biomedical engineering and offer a vision of its future.

Yoganathan is a Fellow in BMES, a Regents' professor in Biomedical Engineering and associate chair for research at Georgia Tech. Past awards include: the Theo Pilkington award for Biomedical Engineering Education, American Society of Education; the H. R. Lissner Award, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (highest award for Bioengineering in ASME); and he was a Founding Fellow, American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Yoganathan's research work focuses on cardiovascular fluid dynamics, optimization of cardiovascular surgeries, surgical planning, use of MRI and 3D echo to study blood flow patterns in cardiovascular structures, and tissue engineering of heart valves.