Professor Baumgartner designs, supervises and undertakes research into various aspects of the biology and ecology of freshwater fish and systems. His interests are fish passage and fish migration, the impact of human disturbance on aquatic ecosystems, developing solutions to global challenges in water resource management and the connections between people and inland fish.

Irakli is a Mathematical Biologist. He obtained his MA and PhD degrees in mathematics at Arizona State University. He then worked as a postdoc at Princeton University, where in 2002 he postulated that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (CO2) decrease the concentrations of minerals essential for human nutrition, including iron and zinc, in plants globally.