Dr. Ramesh Tharmalingam
Main Focus
Ramesh works on “Integrating Technology: Unmanned aerial vehicles and Satellite Telemetry for scientific monitoring of birds and their habitat in India”, which would further help in establishing a bilateral mechanism for student and faculty exchanges between institutions towards solving mutual environmental issues.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Ramesh Tharmalingam works as a Senior Scientist in the Department of Conservation Ecology of Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), Coimbatore, India. He is a Fellow of Indian National Young Academy of Science and also an Honorary Researcher at the Centre for Functional Biodiversity, School of Life Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Dr. Ramesh specializes in large and meso-carnivore ecology, human-wildlife interactions, population ecology, documentation of endangered mammalian species, and prey-predator interactions. He has 18 years of conservation research experience spanning India, Laos and South Africa, where he has worked on several keystone species (Tiger, Leopard, Dhole, Hyaena, Serval, Elephant, Gaur, Caracal, Jackal). He studied the impact of habitat fragmentation on spatial movement and population ecology of carnivores in South Africa. He was awarded Government of India’s prestigious Ramanujan Fellowship to initiate the work on large carnivores in India. His research addressed the impact of habitat fragmentation and associated anthropogenic pressure on large mammal population for mitigating human-large mammal conflict, and socio-ecological forces on threatened mammal populations in Eastern and Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India. After his PhD in Wildlife Science from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun, he also worked with WWF International and Bombay Natural History Society on elephant and migratory birds, respectively. He has published over 100 research papers in Ecology and Conservation journals.