Karma Ngodup taught the Tibetan language for six years at the University of California, Berkeley where he started the program from scratch in 2004. Prior to teaching at Berkeley, he served as a Tibetan Research Consultant for the Electronic and Cultural Atlas Initiatives (ECAI) at Berkeley. He worked on the Tibetan gazetteer project about the religious history of Ganden called the Yellow Beryl [ba’i dur ya ser po]. He joined the University of Chicago in July 2010.