Biography: Pamela Logan
January, 2000
Pamela Logan never dreamed her career path would take her to Asia. Her professional training was in aerospace science, in which she received a doctorate degree from Stanford University, having obtained a BS and MS from the California Institute of Technology. Subsequently she was employed at the University of California at Los Angeles as a lecturer and research scientist in laser diagnostics applied to combustion. She also holds a third-degree black belt in Shotokan karate, a Japanese martial art.
Parallel to her career as a scientist she developed a talent for photography, and wrote sporadically for newsletters, student publications, and technical journals. Inspired by her martial arts training, in 1989 she applied for and won a travel grant from the Durfee Foundation to investigate the warrior tribes of eastern Tibet, people known as Khampas. The year-long journey led to a book, Among Warriors, now published in hardcover (Overlook Press, 1996) and softcover (Random House, 1998) editions as well as in Polish translation (Ravi, 1998).
In the spring of 1993, again funded by the Durfee Foundation, she returned to China to explore Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. That year she began working full-time with the China Exploration & Research Society (CERS), based in Hong Kong. Through them, she explored areas such as the Changtang in western Tibet, and began examining radar images in search of Silk Road ruins in the country’s northwest.
In 1994 she was named director of a project to conserve the art and architecture of Tibetan monasteries in western Sichuan province. Since then she has led four expeditions composed of international conservation specialists and Tibetan support personnel to two sites where conservation work is underway. As part of that effort she organized a course in mural conservation given to Tibetans in 1999. In 2001 she will publish Saving Tibetan Art, a book about rescuing endangered murals at Tibet's remote Baiya Monastery.
In 1996 Dr. Logan was named "Woman Explorer of the Year" by the Scientific Exploration Society of Great Britain under the sponsorship of Mr. Eric Hotung.
In 1997 Dr. Logan established the Kham Aid Foundation in Los Angeles to support the monastery conservation work and pursue other Kham-related projects, including assistance for Tibetan schools, environmental protection, and economic development. In this effort she is helped by a reading and writing fluency in Mandarin Chinese, and working knowledge of Tibetan.
In 1998 Logan was asked to be one of the founding directors of the Eurasian Origins Foundation, which conducts archeological research in Central Asia. In this role she is working with NASA to use spaceborne imaging radar to identify Silk Road ruins under the sands of the Taklamakan desert.
Logan has given invited lectures for the Royal Geographical Society, Explorer’s Club, Silk Road Foundation, World Monuments Fund, Sierra Club, and other organizations. She has written about her work and travels for such periodicals as The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Far Eastern Economic Review, among others. Her photographs have been published widely, most notably in the September, 1999 issue of National Geographic.