Eloise A. Marais

Eloise Ann Marais is a British/South African Atmospheric Chemist who is a professor at University College London. She leads the UCL Atmospheric Composition and Air Quality group, which develop complex models to understand human influence on air quality.

Early life and education Marais was born in South Africa. She studied chemistry and applied chemistry at the University of KwaZulu-Natal for her undergraduate degree, She spent two years in Leicester before moving to University College London, where she studied the impact of fossil fuel emissions on human health. Her research has shown that fossil fuel emissions accounted for 18% of deaths around the world in 2018, and that regions with the highest concentrations of fossil fuels in the air had the highest rates of mortality. She ran a 10-year simulation to understand how rocket emissions compared with traditional sources of carbon dioxide, finding space tourism undermined environmental efforts on planet Earth. and that these pollutants could destroy the ozone if injected into the stratospheric ozone layer. She showed that this could persist for two or more years.

Marais has ongoing projects to measures the atmosphere above Central London, develop inventories and derive new data sets from satellite observations. She worked as a researcher in residence with the Connected Places Catapult, where she developed tools to better understand the city environment. She has used Multi-Axis Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy to evaluate the presence of nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde. Marias was supported by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to understand air pollution above Leicester. In 2024 she was promoted to Professor at University College London.

Selected publications