The People's Chamber
ISSUE 80
JUN 19-25, 2026
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Professor Emily Shuckburgh CBE
Professor Emily Shuckburgh CBE
DESNZ Chief Scientific Adviser
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Political 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.