Pema Lhamo is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Healthy Minds, where she works with Dr. Tawni Tidwell, CHM research assistant professor, and Dr. Robin Goldman, CHM director of the research support core, on the Tukdam Project: A Study of Flourishing, Aging and Meditation.
Her role centers on building the research and training foundations for a monastic field research team and advancing collaborative inquiry into the experiences of long-term meditation practitioners. Before coming to Madison, WI, she completed her early education at Tibetan Schools in India and her scientific training in Biomedical and Life Sciences at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, followed by doctoral research in prosocial competencies and wellbeing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Pema sees her education as a privilege and feels a deep responsibility to give back to communities, something she has expressed through years of peer mentoring and community health education initiatives she has led. She is drawn to research not as an end in itself but as one deliberate tool among many for building communities grounded in kindness and compassion.