Helen received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and completed her graduate work with Center Founder Richard Davidson studying the behavioral and neural outcomes of compassion meditation training.
She is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California–San Francisco, with faculty appointments at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and Neuroscape Center. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in 2016 through the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine NIH fellowship. Her research focuses on developing novel functional MRI tasks to improve measurement of mental states during meditation, as well as increasing diverse populations within contemplative neuroscience studies using community engagement.