Badri is an economist focusing on a variety of quantitative economic and inter-disciplinary models, to analyze a wide range of economic (mainly international trade), environmental/energy and public health policies. He is widely known for his contributions to develop the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) dataset and model extensions, at Purdue University. He has informed the process of decision making in several major economic policies such as free trade agreements, technology regulations, etc., both through his academic research and consulting/advisory projects. He is also engaged with the startup community across the world as an advisor and co-founder.

He is currently affiliated with the School of Environmental and Forestry Sciences in University of Washington, Seattle. In the areas of climate change, energy, environment and natural resources, in particular, he has developed CGE, econometric and network science models for India, South Asia and rest of the world, to understand the economic implications of several cross-cutting issues such as, water scarcity, water-energy-food nexus, Paris Accord commitments, source-wise emissions in terms of CO2, non-CO2 and air pollutants as well as interactions among them in terms of abatement, carbon pricing/taxation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, interactions between pollution and public health, technological developments in renewable energy sectors, substitution among fossil fuels and renewables, futuristic views of interactions between energy, natural resources and climate with the emergence of new technologies and materials, electric and alternative fuel vehicles, trade policies in forestry sector, etc.

Badri is also a Senior Fellow, European Center for International Political Economy. He has been a consultant to several organizations such as McKinsey, KPMG, PWC, World Bank, UN, ADB, Harvard University, LSE, the Commonwealth Secretariat, etc. He has published over 100 papers and 5 books, in reputed journals such as Nature Communication, Energy Economics, Network and Spatial Economics, Economic Modelling, Applied Economics, Agricultural Economics, etc., and presented his work in over 30 countries across the world.