Prof Emily Shuckburgh

Prof Emily Shuckburgh is Director of Cambridge Zero, the University of Cambridge's major climate change initiative. She is also Professor of Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. 

She is a mathematician and climate scientist and a Fellow of Darwin College, a Fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy, a Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey and a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society.

At the University of Cambridge she is Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER), Academic Director of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science, and co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration. She worked for more than a decade at the British Antarctic Survey where her work included leading a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate. Prior to that she undertook research at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and at MIT.  She has also acted as an advisor on climate to the UK Government in various capacities, including as a Friend of COP26.

In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to science and the public communication of science. She is co-author with HM King Charles III and Tony Juniper of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change.

She is Honorary President of the Aldersgate Group.

Timeline

1994 BA Mathematics, Magdalen College, Oxford University
1995 Part III Mathematics Tripos, Trinity College, Cambridge University
1999 PhD, Atmospheric Dynamics, Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University
1999 Senior Rouse Ball Scholar, Trinity College, Cambridge
2000-03 Research Fellow, Darwin College, Cambridge
2000 Post-doctoral Research Associate, European Ozone Co-ordinating Unit, University of Cambridge
2001-03 EC Marie Curie Research Fellow, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris
2003- Fellow, Darwin College, Cambridge
2003-06 Director, Geophysical and Environmental Fluid Dynamics Summer School, Dept Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge
2005 Visiting Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2006-09 NERC Research Fellow, British Antarctic Survey and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2009-15 Head, Open Oceans, British Antarctic Survey
2010-13 Scientific Advisor to Dept of Energy and Climate Change
2015-19 Deputy-Head, Polar Oceans, British Antarctic Survey
2019- Director, Cambridge Zero, University of Cambridge
2019- Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge

Other Activities

2001-09 Director, Weather Informatics Ltd
1999 British Association Media Fellow at BBC Tomorrow’s World

• Member of the Energy and Environment Group which applies computer science to address renewable energy integration, energy demand reduction, and the assessment and management of environmental impact (e.g. climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation) from anthropogenic activities.
• Academic director of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science which supports the work of climate scientists through computer science, software engineering, and data science research
• Co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration which is identifying cost-effective nature-based solutions that harness the power of ecosystems to provide broad societal benefits including biodiversity recovery and climate mitigation and adaptation.

Personal research interests include use of machine learning in climate science and theoretical aspects of atmosphere, ocean and climate dynamics.