Paul Pop is primarily an ornithologist, more generally a wildlife biologist, and more broadly a scientist interested in the use of technology to record, measure, understand, and protect nature. He did his Bachelors in Chemistry, Environmental Science, and Zoology and his Masters in Wildlife Sciences. He carried out or was part of multiple long-term and short term projects across India, primarily on birds. He has a particular affinity towards mountains. So, much of his research till date has been in the Western Ghats and Western Himalayas in India, with a focus on population, community and behavioral ecology of the extant dinosaurs. 

He is a proponent of free and open-source software (FOSS), and his current work at ATREE (in 2025) as a Research Associate in the BIRD Lab includes a start-to-end workflow for landcover mapping of Siang Valley, as well as automation of camera trap data entry, both using FOSS. He provides technical assistance to the researchers at both Siang and Bagepalli field stations. In his free time, he contributes to “citizen science” initiatives like eBird and iNaturalist; encourages others to do the same; as well as write code to analyse such datasets. He also has an interest in quizzing (both participating and conducting) and has run two seasons of EMU – an international nature, science, and technology quiz league.