Rahul has been studying bats since 2003 and is involved in extensive surveys on bat diversity in the region of Northern Western Ghats along Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa state. In 2008, he was selected as a SEABCRU (South East Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit) fellow, a collaboration with Earth watch institute, UK and got to work under Dr. Tigga Kingston and her research team in Malaysia for 2 months along with 4 other members from South East Asian countries to study Bat ecology in the Malaysian Rain forest ecosystem.
With masters degree in Environmental Sciences, post graduate diploma in Natural resources management and sustainable development, certificate course in ornithology, GIS, he has been involved various conservation, education, sustainable development related projects in western Ghats. He has been working on the designing and implementing locale specific ecology education programmes for school children in Northern western Ghats and has also undertaken training programmes for conducting PBR (Peoples Biodiversity Register), and is part of team who invented the concept of CBR (Children’s Biodiversity Register), for a Climate change adaptation process for rural communities in arid regions of Maharashtra.
Rahul works as consultant in Ecology and Education and currently he is working in the Western Ghats with many organizations on integrated projects, building a large ecological database on Indian Bats through training, capacity building, bat research and conservation projects in Northern western Ghats.
Rahul initiated the IBCRU network and is currently coordinating all IBCRU programmes.