Emily Shuckburgh


Emily Fleur Shuckburgh,, is a climate scientist, mathematician and science communicator. She is Director of Cambridge Zero, the University of Cambridge’s climate change initiative, and is a fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Her research interests include the dynamics of the atmosphere, oceans and climate and environmental data science. She is a theoretician, numerical modeller and observational scientist.

Education

Shuckburgh attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where she earned a BA in Mathematics in 1994. She subsequently completed a PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Cambridge in 1999. Shuckburgh performed post-doctoral research at École normale supérieure in Paris from 2001 to 2003 and at MIT in 2005 as a Visiting Scientist, working in the areas of atmosphere and ocean dynamics.

Career

In 2000, Shuckburgh became a research fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge, and a fellow in mathematics in 2003; as of 2019 she holds several positions within the University of Cambridge – she is a reader in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, an associate fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy and fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Shuckburgh leads the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in the Application of AI to the Study of Environmental Risks.
She joined the British Antarctic Survey in 2006 where she led the Natural Environment Research Council Ocean Regulation of Climate by Heat and Carbon Sequestration and Transports project. She became the Survey's head of Open Oceans in 2009, deputy head of the Polar Oceans Team in 2015, and a fellow in 2019. Her research interests include the dynamics of the atmosphere, oceans and climate and environmental data science. She is a theoretician, numerical modeller and observational scientist.
Shuckburgh is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, where she is co-Chair of their Climate Science Communications Group and a former Chair of their Scientific Publications Committee. She acted as an advisor to the UK Government on behalf of the NERC.

Science communication

Shuckburgh has written on climate science, sustainability and women in science for publications including the Financial Times, New Statesman and The Sunday Times. She has also written books, and was co-author of Climate Change for the Ladybird Expert series with the Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper. She serves on the board of the Campaign for Science and Engineering.
In 2016 she was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours for "services to science and the public communication of science".

Works