Amy P. Chen

Amy P. Chen is the Program Manager for the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program in the Earth Science Division (ESD) of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. In this role she provides strategic leadership for the program, oversees the GLOBE Implementation Office and GLOBE Data Information System, builds connectivity to ESD missions/research, and works with GLOBE federal co-sponsors (NOAA, NSF, U.S. Department of State). Founded on Earth Day in 1994, the GLOBE Program is a science and education program that engages a network of students, educators, scientists, and citizens from more than 125 countries around the world in inquiry-based learning of Earth system science to better understand, sustain, and improve Earth’s environment at multiple scales.

Amy had a variety of scientific and educational program management experiences. Before her current role, Amy was the Associate Program Manager for GLOBE and ESD’s Early Career Research Program (Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program and the New (Early Career) Investigator program). Before joining NASA, she was the program manager for “Complex Time: Adaptation, Aging, Arrow of Time” at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), the world’s leading hub for transdisciplinary collaboration, syntheses, and the study of complex adaptive systems. Prior to SFI, Amy co-directed the University of New Mexico’s Teaching Fellows program and Course Design Institute as the Associate Director at the Center for Teaching Excellence. She also conducted STEM faculty development using the Scientific Teaching pedagogical framework. Amy began her federal service as a Presidential Management STEM Fellow (PMF) at NSF where she worked on multiple programs in the GEO/Division of Earth Sciences portfolio. During this time, she had a five month detail in NASA Earth Surface and Interior (ESI) focus area, where she worked on proposal merit review and synthesizing community input toward an ESI scientific and programmatic priority document. Before becoming a PMF, Amy taught undergraduate Earth Science courses while she was a dissertation fellow at Middle Tennessee State University.

Amy is an experimental geophysicist by training. She studied magnetic nanoparticles biosynthesized by microbes in stratified estuaries as well as in ancient sedimentary records. Amy received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Macquarie University (Australia), M.S. & B.S. in Geophysics from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Munich, Germany. When she is not working, Amy enjoys bicycling, growing vegetables from her childhood in Taiwan, and keeping up with two very active little girls.