Professor Emily Shuckburgh CBE
Biography
Professor Emily Shuckburgh was appointed the Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in November 2025.
Emily retains her role as Director of Cambridge Zero at the University of Cambridge. She is also Professor of Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology.
Emily is a mathematician and climate scientist and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. She is President-elect of the Royal Meteorological Society (FRMetS), a Fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, a Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS), and an Honorary Fellow of the Energy Institute (HonFEI).
At the University of Cambridge she is Academic Director of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science, and co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Regeneration and of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER).
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 is co-author, with HM King Charles III and Tony Juniper, of the ‘Ladybird Book on Climate Change’.
Emily was awarded an OBE in 2016 and a CBE in 2025.
DESNZ Chief Scientific Adviser
The DESNZ Chief Scientific Adviser is responsible for:
- providing independent and impartial science and engineering advice to ministers and policymakers across the department and Clean Energy Superpower Mission
- ensuring the department has robust systems in place to access science and engineering expertise, including as co-chair of the DESNZ Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) and as departmental Head of the Government Science and Engineering Profession
- maintaining strong links to academia and external experts, and working closely with other departmental CSAs to maximise the collective expertise of the cross-government CSA network in identifying and resolving cross-departmental problems