Spark is excited to welcome Dr. Ben Poulter as a Senior Scientist. Ben is a distinguished climate scientist and a leader in the field of remote sensing and greenhouse gas measurements and monitoring. He comes to Spark from NASA, where he served as a Research Scientist in the Earth Sciences Division at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2024, he also served as the Deputy Director for Greenhouse Gas Measurements and Monitoring at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Ben is also the 2025 Johannes Geiss Fellow hosted by the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland where he is working to evaluate monitoring capabilities of the Earth system to ‘overshooting’ climate limits. 

At Spark, Ben will lead the Warming-Induced Emissions program, which advances scientific understanding of how climate change—including changes in temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric carbon dioxide—is driving greenhouse gas feedbacks that amplify warming. This includes the rising release of methane from warming tropical wetlands and the potential for increased carbon dioxide and methane emissions from thawing Arctic permafrost. The program also aims to integrate these emissions into global climate decision-making and further scientific understanding of potential climate mitigation strategies to help limit future emissions.

Ben’s deep expertise will help advance Spark’s goal of accelerating progress in emerging, high-impact climate fields. 

See more of Ben’s previous research here.