AMOS Fellows 2020

Congratulations to Dr Helen Cleugh and Professor Nathan Bindoff who have been elected to AMOS Fellow in 2020 based on their outstanding achievements. Brief summaries of their careers and contributions are given below. 

Dr Helen Cleugh

Helen Cleugh is a senior principal research scientist in the CSIRO Climate Science Centre. She has made major contributions to atmospheric boundary layer research and as a research leader, mentor, and research manager in atmospheric and climate science in Australia for more than 30 years. She was instrumental in establishing the global FluxNet and its Australian component, OzFlux, a network of towers around Australia that continuously measure the exchange (flux) of carbon dioxide, water vapour, and energy between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere, as part of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). As the inaugural Deputy Director of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) collaboration between CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, Helen provided strong support for the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (ACCESS). She co-chaired the Australian Climate Change Science Programme (ACCSP) and led the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub. In 2017 she became the inaugural Director of the CSIRO Climate Science Centre. Helen has held several national and international science advisory positions including her current role as vice-chair of the World Climate Research Programme Joint Scientific Committee. She has mentored many early and mid-career scientists and was a key supporter for the establishment of the CSIRO Aspendale Women’s Network. 

Professor Nathan Bindoff 

Professor Nathan Bindoff is currently the Program Leader for the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership. Ocean and Cryosphere Centre at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania. As an international leader in physical oceanography and climate, his work has focussed on the role of the ocean in climate, the detection and attribution of climate change, and the impacts of ocean and climate variability on a wide range of different sectors. He was a leader in the observation of, and methods for, interpreting ocean warming in response to anthropogenic climate change, the use of large-scale ocean salinity changes to document observed changes in large-scale rainfall patterns, and documenting the decline in oxygen content of the oceans. Through the Climate Futures program, Nathan led the production of regional climate change projections for south-east Australia which have been applied in many sectors including wine growing. He was a Coordinating Lead Author in both the fourth and fifth IPCC Assessments. He led the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing (TPAC), was a key researcher in the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, and was a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (CLEX) and the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Earth System and Climate Change Hub. He has collaborated widely with international researchers and has supervised over 30 PhD students.

Further Information:

Beth Ebert,
Chair, AMOS Awards Committee
awards@amos.org.au