In 2004, he received a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2009, he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware, where he performed doctoral research with Norman Wagner and Eric Kaler. From 2009-2012, he performed postdoctoral research in the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Patrick Doyle. Helgeson joined the faculty of UCSB in 2012, where he holds an appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering and is a faculty member of the Materials Research Laboratory.