Damodarans research areas span Public Policy, Commodity Trade, IPR regimes for Biotechnology and Nanotechnology sectors and Environmental Economics.

He holds a PhD in Economics from the Department of Economics, University of Kerala. He was US-AEP Fellow with the University of California at Berkeley and Environmental Fellow with the US-EPA in Atlanta both during 1994. During the year 2000, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada having won the Shastri Indo-Canadian Fellowship. He was also a Visiting Fellow with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canada working on Trade and Environment Issues in the special context of the WTO-TRIPS and SPS agreements. During 2003, Damodaran was Visiting Fellow with the Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany researching on forestry issues while an year later he worked as Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute of Developing Economies, Japan working on the economic and IPR dimensions of Biotechnology and Nanotechnology industries .

In 2004 he was awarded the prestigious Homi Bhabha Fellowship, which he pursues at IIMB. He has published in reputed international and national journals including Journal of Developing Economies, World Development, and Journal of Environmental Management and the Economic and Political Weekly. and has refereed international discussion papers to his credit. His book Towards an Agroecosystem Policy for India was published by Tata McGraw Hill in 2001. In addition his papers have been published by the UNEP and UN-ESCAP.He has been consultant to the UN-ESCAP, UNEP, and UNCTAD and has also been associated with World Bank Projects in the fields of clean technologies and commodity futures. Currently he is member of the advisory expert groups set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to advise Government of India on the 'UN Convention on Desertification' and on 'precautionary principle approaches' to 'trade and environment'.

Prior to joining IIMB Damodaran worked as Professor at the Indian Institute of Plantation Management, Bangalore for nearly eight years. He has also worked for the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India during 1981 -1996.