Hema Somanathan completed her PhD from University fo Bombay working on plant-pollinator interactions. Subsequently, she was a Wenner-Gren postdoctiral fellow at Lund University, Sweden from 2006 to 2009 working on the sensory ecology of nocturnal and diurnal bees. She joined IISER Thiruvananthapuram as Assistant Professor in August 2009.

Her research interests lie in understanding the evolutionary ecology of plant-pollinator interactions, sensory behaviour of social and solitary bees, and collective behaviours in social spiders.