Isha Bopardikar has been studying cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) in Indian waters since 2014. She holds a PhD from IISER Tirupati, completed in collaboration with the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University. Her research focuses on acoustic-based density estimation, particularly for species that are difficult to study through conventional visual surveys. She has led and contributed to projects on Indo-Pacific finless porpoises, Indian Ocean humpback dolphins, and Arabian Sea humpback whales. She is interested in understanding the impact of anthropogenic activities and their long-term overlap with marine mammal populations. Her research has been supported by the Rufford Foundation (UK), the Marine Mammal Commission (USA), and the Mangrove Foundation (India). She is interested in applying a passive acoustic monitoring framework to study long-term occurrence patterns of oceanic cetacean species and develop an acoustic-based framework for population estimation of offshore, deep-diving cetaceans.

Beyond research, Isha is committed to science communication and capacity building and has worked to develop outreach materials, conduct bioacoustics workshops for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as conservation practitioners. She is also interested in supporting community-based conservation initiatives.