Sandeep works at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig in Germany. He is a conservation biologist by training, and an alumnus of the Wildlife Institute of India, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, and George Mason University, USA, where he earned his PhD. His doctoral research on landscape genetics of tigers in central India reveled the importance of connectivity in maintaining gene flow and meta-population persistence of tiger populations. He has over 20 years of field and lab-based research experience working on large mammals in South Asia. In this period has worked with many stakeholders including NGOs, universities, international donor organizations, and governmental departments and ministries. He has conducted multidisciplinary research on diverse topics encompassing both ecology and evolutionary aspects, on various large terrestrial mammals including the tiger, snow leopard, leopard, sloth bear, Himalayan brown bear, Tibetan wolf, Eurasian lynx, and jungle cat in various ecosystems ranging from Himalayan cold desert and alpine region to dry-deciduous sub-tropical forest, mangrove swamps, and tropical rainforest. His specialization is in conservation genetics of large mammalian carnivores in human-dominated landscape, systematic conservation planning using GIS & spatial analysis, and population monitoring. My research interests range from topics as diverse as population and landscape genetics, foraging ecology, competition and resource partitioning, animal behavior, to devising innovative ways of population monitoring, integrated spatial conservation planning, human-wildlife conflict resolution, and ecological ramifications of geo-politics.
