Dr. Helen Marie Amos

Biography

Dr. Helen M. Amos is a Senior Research Scientist in the Atmospheric Chemistry Group led by Prof. Colette L. Heald within the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science.

She was born in 1986 in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Dr. Helen M. Amos received her undergraduate degree in Atmospheric Sciences with a minor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2009. She received her PhD in 2014 from Harvard University in Earth & Planetary Science modeling the global fate and transport of mercury (Hg) pollution in the environment. Dr. Amos was a Postdoctoral Fellow from 2014-2016 at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health modeling the biogeochemical cycling of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) pollution in the global oceans. Before entering public service, Dr. Amos was an environmental consultant modeling options for cleaning up freshwater sites contaminated with mercury (Hg). She entered public service in the US federal government in 2016 as a Science & Technology Policy Fellow sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Research & Development, Innovation Team in Washington, DC. She supported activities across a variety of topics as a fellow, including low-cost air and water quality sensors, pollution from excess nitrogen and phosphorus, citizen science, prize competitions, and innovation accelerators. In 2018, Dr. Amos joined Science Systems and Applications, Inc (SSAI) as a federal contractor providing mission enabling support to US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA, where she was promoted to a Lead Research Scientist Supervisor. At NASA Goddard, she first held the role of Science Outreach Lead (2018-2020) for the GLOBE Observer project expanding the use of crowdsourced GLOBE observations for scientific research. From 2020-2024, Dr. Amos held the role of Applications Scientist supporting the Applied Sciences office within Earth Sciences Division to facilitate practical uses of NASA Goddard's satellite observations, ground-based measurements, and models in the areas of air quality, climate, and disasters. She joined the staff at ETH in March 2025.

Awards

2023 NASA Robert H. Goddard Award for Exceptional Achievement for Science

2022 NASA Robert H. Goddard Award for Exceptional Achievement for Mission & Enabling Support

2022 Science Systems and Applications, Inc (SSAI) Performance Award for Customer Support

2019 Science Systems and Applications, Inc (SSAI) Early Career Award

2014-2011 US National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship

2011-2010 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Graduate Research Fellowship

2009-2005 Washington Scholars Undergraduate Scholarship

Publications

Amos, HM, NK Skaff, S Schollaert Uz,  FS Policelli, D Slayback, E Macorps, MJ Jo, K Patel, CA Keller, P Abue, V Buchard, AK Werner, 2023, Public Health Data Applications Using the CDC Tracking Network: Augmenting Environmental Hazard Information with Lower-Latency NASA Data, GeoHealth, DOI: 10.1029/2023GH000971

Colón Robles, M, HM Amos, JB Dodson, J Bouwman, T Rogerson, A Bombosch, L Farmer, A Burdick, J Taylor, LH Chambers, 2020, The GLOBE Spring Cloud Challenge, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27137669

Amos, HM, MK Starke, TM Rogerson, M Colón Robles, T Andersen, R Boger, BA Campbell, RD Low, P Nelson, D Overoye, JE Taylor, KL Weaver, TM Ferrell, H Kohl, TG Schwerin, 2020, Earth and Space Science, DOI: 10.1029/2020EA001175

A full list of Dr. Helen M. Amos's more than 30 publications is available on ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0297-6643