Joined Planning and Development Division of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) as Research Analyst on 06/04/1998. He has been involved in the preparation of the 10th Five Year Plan of IGNOU. He has done extensive research in the field of Open and Distance Education and in Applied Geo-Physics. Dr. R. Sudarsan was associated with the Distance Education Council for 2 years (2006-08) and was mainly handling the Open and Distance Learning database of India. Currently he is the nodal officer of the Convergence Scheme, the blended learning system of IGNOU where more than 441 Partner Institutions associated with various Conventional Universities are actively involved in offering IGNOU programmes.