Thomas has lived in China for five years as a Princeton in Asia fellow, as a freelance journalist in Beijing, and as a Fulbright scholar. He researches how rice farming gave southern China a very different culture from wheat-farming northern China. Thomas also founded Smart Air, a social enterprise that makes low-cost DIY air purifiers to help people in China protect themselves from air pollution. Thomas Talhelm 的研究兴趣包括文化对人类行为的影响。他最近的研究课题是大米和麦子种植与中国南北文化差异的关系，先后在《Science》，《Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin》，《Journal of Experimental Social Psychology》和《Current Directions in Psychological Science》等学术杂志上发表研究成果，其中2014年的论文是《Science》的封面文章。