During the 1970's he was a professor at a small college in Vermont, who typically said yes when good students wanted to do experiments in parapsychology. A series of coincidences led him to Princeton University in 1980, where he coordinated research at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab until he retired in 2002. In 1997 he founded the Global Consciousness Project (GCP) which he continues to direct. Nelson's broad interests in psychology, physics, philosophy, and the arts have generated many opportunities to collaborate with creative people, including the interdisciplinary teams at PEAR and the GCP, developing technologies and experimental applications to study consciousness, intention, remote perception, and mind-matter interactions both in the laboratory and in natural situations.