Dr. Ravindranath retired as a Professor from Centre for Sustainable Technologies of Indian Institute, Bangalore. His major areas of research and policy advocacy include; Climate Change, Forests, Bioenergy and Ecosystem Services. He has focused his research on various dimensions of Climate Change; Mitigation Assessment in land use sectors, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory in Land Use Sectors, Impact of Climate Change and Vulnerability Assessment in Forests and Agro-ecosystems, Adaptation and Climate Resilience, and Forest Ecology.

He has also worked on Bioenergy, Biofuels and Biomass Production and Ecosystem Services. He has been an author for all reports of IPCC on mitigation of climate change in land use sectors, since the Second Assessment Report of IPCC. He is also an author for all recent reports of IPCC on Greenhouse Gas Inventory Guidelines. He has been an author for two report of IPBES. He was a member of STAP of GEF (on climate change) and SAP (Scientific Advisory Panel) of UNEP for Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-6).

He is an expert for UNFCCC for GHG (Greenhouse Gas) inventory review process. He has published extensively on climate change, bioenergy and forest ecology. He has published 8 books (from Oxford and Cambridge Uni. Press, Kluwer, and Springer Publishers) out of which 4 are on Climate Change. He has published nearly 150 peer reviewed research papers, out of which about 60 are on Climate Change.