Than Grove, THL’s Technical Director, brings a PhD in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies from the University of Virginia and extensive technical expertise in digital humanities to his development of THL’s core technologies. He is the technical architect behind THL’s Tibetan Literary Collections and JIATS, and is the main architect of the site’s use of XML. He has been working with the project since 1999 and was one of the main designers and programmers involved in creating the catalog of the Collected Tantras of the Ancients.
Than’s own primary area of scholarly research focuses on the Mahāyoga vehicle of the Old Schools (rnying ma) and the root scripture of that vehicle, the Secret Essence Tantra (gsang ba’i snying po’i rgyud). His dissertation, “Penetrating the Secret Essence,” concerned the famous commentary on the tantra by the third Dodrupchen entitled The Key to the Treasury (mdzod kyi lde mig).