Diego Hangartner has dedicated over thirty years to external scientific research and internal meditative exploration of the mind and consciousness.  He started as a pharmacologist specializing in psychopharmacology and addiction, always interested in what constitutes a healthy mind and how to cultivate it.  He spent many years at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in India, studying, translating, publishing several Tibetan works, and organizing several large events with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Europe.

Diego was COO of Mind and Life Institute in the US and co-founder and director of Mind and Life Institute in Europe until 2015. Mind and Life is an organization that brings together scientists and contemplatives to discuss, research and fund research into how to tackle some of the toughest challenges facing mankind. Today, he continues his research and teaching with the Max Planck Institute, ETH (The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and Zurich University.

Diego founded the “Institute of Mental Balance and Universal Ethics” (IMBUE), an interdisciplinary initiative to share his teaching more broadly and to develop and provide tools and programs that foster mental balance. He created and teaches “The Wheel of Mental Balance,” a methodology to cultivate a healthy and resilient mind.