Dr. Mahesh Sankaran is a faculty at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. His area of expertise is community and ecosystems ecology where his lab looks at interactions and feedbacks between climate, biogeochemistry, fires and herbivory influence the structure, composition and stability of ecosystems and the cycling and sequestration of nutrients and how projected changes in climate such as increasing variability of rainfall, increased frequency of droughts, increasing aridity in the tropics, nitrogen and phosphorus deposition and rising CO2 will impact ecosystem function, stability and services.