Kalaiyaham Academy is led by Dr. S. Palaniappan He has worked closely with Arathi School of Dance in Dallas. He is a Tamil philologist and cultural historian. He has published research papers dealing with the bhakti movement, Tamil literature including Cankam poems, the Tevaram, and the Nalayirat Tivviyap Pirapantam, ancient Tamil social history, and medieval Tamil history. For instance, he has shown that the conventional understanding of the name for Vaishnava saints, Alvar, as ‘one who is immersed (in devotion)’ is wrong, and the correct meaning of the term is ‘one who rules’ or ‘Lord’.  In an article published in the popular news portal thePrint.in he documented the participation of a Muslim Classical musician as the supervisor of dancers and musicians in the Tanjavur temple under the Chola emperor, Rajaraja I in early 11^th century. His publications are available are available online. 

Palaniappan has composed lyrics for dance compositions, selected songs for performances, translated the lyrics of songs and Classical Tamil (Cankam or Sangam poems) and later poems. He has also conducted a six-lecture series on Indian cultural history for Bharatanatyam students of the Arathi School of Dance in Dallas, Texas.

Palaniappan also serves as President of South Asia Research and Information Institute, where he organized a conference on the history of Catirattam/Bharatanatyam and a conference on the history of South Indian Classical music before the 19^th century. In 2017 at Harvard University, he gave a lecture titled, “From Priestess to Performer: Understanding the History of Tamil Temple Women.” In 2021 on the online platform called Re-Cognising Dance he gave a lecture titled, “Pre-Devadasi Dance in the Tamil Country.”