Cibele Hummel do Amaral

I am an Earth & Environment data scientist working at the intersection of ecology, environmental science, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence. My current research focuses on how multiple disturbances and environmental conditions affect the stability, productivity, and Nature's Contributions to People across various global ecosystems, including temperate and tropical forests, savannas, and wetlands. To achieve this, I integrate multimodal datasets from ground measurements and annotations with observations from drones, aircraft, and satellites (particularly hyperspectral and lidar data, as well as multispectral and reanalysis time series), using advanced analytics and scalable computing tools.

I study processes across various scales, from individual plants and households to global levels, and over different timeframes. My goal is to generate insights that inform biodiversity conservation, ecosystem adaptive management and restoration, as well as policy and decision-making aimed at enhancing the resilience of complex socio-ecological systems, such as those in wildland–urban interfaces and coastal zones. In addition to addressing critical questions relevant to today's global challenges, I am dedicated to advancing open science by designing and building reproducible and interoperable open-source tools that broaden access to cutting-edge Earth & Environment data science and support community-driven solutions.

I hold a B.E. in Forest Engineering, with a focus on community ecology, from the Federal University of Viçosa, and a D.Sc. in Geosciences, specializing in mineral resources and environment, from the University of São Paulo. Throughout my academic and professional career, I have held a post-doctoral research associate position at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), a tenure-track faculty position at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), and visiting scholar roles at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

Currently, I serve as a Research Associate/Research Scientist and the Analytics Director for the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Lab (ESIIL) and the Earth Lab at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. I am also a selected research fellow of the University of Colorado Boulder's Sustainability Research Initiative (SRI). In addition to advancing my scientific research, I supervise and mentor large teams of graduate research assistants, postdoctoral researchers, and professional research assistants while leading the cyberinfrastructure and analytics strategy for ESIIL and Earth Lab. This strategy focuses on designing, building, and integrating advanced multisource data infrastructures, machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, and cyberinfrastructure tools and systems to support large-scale scientific discoveries and translation. I contribute to the scientific community by serving in leadership and advisory roles, including on ESA's Open Science Section leadership committee, NASA's Adaptation and Response in Drylands (ARID) scoping study leadership team, and NASA's ORNL DAAC users’ working group. Additionally, I regularly participate in scientific committees and serve as guest editor and reviewer for conferences, scientific journals, and funding agencies.