From 2002 until 2020 Cornelia Paulsch was heading the ibn office in Regensburg. Multilateral environmental agreements were a focus of her work, especially the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In many projects a focus was on education and communication and since the founding of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) the science-policy interface became even more important in her work. Since 2014 Cornelia Paulsch was involved in IPBES capacity building projects in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
During her international studies of biology (in Germany, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador) and within her phd-thesis Cornelia Paulsch investigated ecosystem processes and functional connections of biodiversity in tropical forest ecosystems. Her additional studies in geography and several research activities in Latin America allowed intense treatment of environmental problems in developing countries.