Dr. Helen Greatrex

Biography

Helen Greatrex is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Penn State University, focusing on remote sensing and geospatial analysis. She received her Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Reading in the UK in 2012 and holds a post-graduate diploma in Atmospheric Ocean Science from the same institution in 2007. Additionally, she obtained her M.Phys. in Physics Astrophysics from the University of Manchester in 2006. Her research interests include geo-statistics and end-user driven weather statistics, specifically in the context of weather risk and international development. She works on satellite rainfall products to improve decision-making, such as validation metrics and mechanistic modeling around crop, soil, health, and insurance. Helen's current projects involve assessing the impact of rainfall on disease hydrocephalus and designing weather risk metrics based on livelihoods in Somalia. Prior to joining Penn State in 2019, she was an associate research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University and contributed to the University of Reading's TAMSAT rainfall research group starting in 2007. Helen is actively involved with the American Meteorological Society, where she chairs the Presidential Forum for meteorologists in the humanitarian sector, and she has received the AMS Editor's Award for her reviewing work in the journal Weather and Climate Society.

Research Interests

Courses