Heleen de Coninck is a full Professor of Socio-Technical Innovation and Climate Change at Eindhoven University of Technology since 2020, and an Associate Professor in Innovation Studies and Sustainability at the Department of Environmental Science at Radboud University Nijmegen's Faculty of Science since 2012. As a researcher, Heleen’s main research focus is on the role of innovation and technology in the international climate negotiations, on policy for making energy-intensive industry climate-neutral, and on the viability and societal dynamics of new technologies for 1.5C-mitigation pathways.

Heleen was a Coordinating Lead Author in the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C, and is currently a Coordinating Lead Author in the AR6. She was part of the IPCC Working Group III Technical Support Unit during the AR4 cycle, where she coordinated the IPCC Special Report on CCS. She was also a Lead Author in the climate mitigation part of AR5 (2014).

Heleen graduated in Chemistry and in Environmental Science at Radboud University in Nijmegen, specialising in climate change and atmospheric chemistry. After her studies, she worked as atmospheric chemistry researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.

Before joining academia in 2012, Heleen worked at the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), the largest energy research institute in the country, for over 10 years. There, she worked on international climate policy, rural electrification, the Clean Development Mechanism, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), capacity building in developing countries, and policy studies.

In 2009, Heleen finished a PhD, which she conducted alongside her work at ECN, on technology in the international climate regime, at the VU University Amsterdam, in collaboration with Princeton University in the United States.