Postdoc

Rekha is an ecologist interested in understanding and solving biodiversity conservation challenges in tropical and human-dominated landscapes. She received her Ph.D., in ecology from the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University (CSU). Her doctoral work showed that agricultural lands in northern India serve as seasonal habitats for tigers and several species of wild herbivores, with implications for restoring connectivity and addressing human-wildlife conflicts. Following her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Patrick Keys at the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at CSU. In that capacity, she developed a socio-ecological systems model to understand how diverse policy decisions affect pastoral household well-being across Kenya and led the development of a Kenyan afforestation decision-support tool. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Jon Salerno, she is investigating the diverse ways in which agropastoral households in Tanzania interact with each other and their environment and the resulting implications for large carnivore conservation in the region.

Outside of academia, she advocates for local renewable energy transition efforts, and enjoys writing about the workaday struggles and triumphs of the lifeforms and landscapes around her.