Helen Chu is a physician-scientist and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Washington Schools of Medicine and Public Health. She studies respiratory viruses and vaccines, and has conducted observational and interventional studies of vaccines and therapeutics, including maternal influenza vaccines in Nepal, SARS-CoV-2 and influenza vaccines in the US, and antivirals for treatment of influenza and COVID-19. She has conducted research on maternal immunization for respiratory viruses, including studies characterizing maternal-fetal immunity against respiratory syncytial virus and influenza, and studied correlates of protection against respiratory viruses across multiple populations.

As principal investigator of the Seattle Flu Study, she helped design a prototype pandemic preparedness platform, conducting home-based testing for respiratory viruses starting in 2018. This study first identified COVID-19 community transmission in the US, and accelerated the public health response to SARS-CoV-2 in the US. Early in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, she established a cohort of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 to understand vaccine and infection-induced immunity, and factors that predict long COVID, and now serves as a site principal investigator for the NIH RECOVER consortium to study long COVID. She has published over 250 papers, and has received funding from NIH, CDC, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as multiple other sources. She is a member of multiple national and international expert committees on respiratory viruses and vaccines, has given invited talks to the Food and Drug Administration and World Health Organization, and has served as a voting member on the Centers for Disease Control Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and Chair of the Pediatric RSV Committee.

For her work, she has received multiple awards, including the Washingtonian of the Year from the Washington State Leadership Board, Researcher of the Year from the Puget Sound Business Journal, and Ed Nowakowski Senior Memorial Clinical Virology Award from the Pan American Society of Clinical Virology.