Professor Jacqueline McGlade is currently UNEP Chief Scientist and Director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment. She is on leave from University College London, where she is Professor in Environmental Informatics in Earth Sciences. Prior to this she was Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, Director of the Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Warwick, Director of Theoretical Ecology at the FZ Jülich and Senior Scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in the Federal Government of Canada. She has held a number of key participatory and advisory roles including as Board Member of the Environment Agency for England and Wales and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Trustee of the Natural History Museum, and is a member of a number of environmental prize juries.
Her activities and research continue to be focused on the dynamics of ecosystems and planetary systems, sustainable development and the governance of natural resources, environmental informatics with particular reference to the development of smart systems for environmental monitoring and observation, socio-economic transitions and policy analysis. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, articles, books, plus government reports and legal submissions to the International Court of Justice and produced and presented award winning feature films (Planet RE;think, One Degree Matters, Our Arctic Challenge), TV (Blue Revolution, Power of Nature, The Next Big Thing, Chaos) and radio series (Ocean Planet, Learning from Nature, King John’s Treasure). As founder of her own software company, she has developed many software systems, games and applications particularly in the area of fuzzy logic and decision-making under high uncertainty (including SimCoast, Flood Ranger).
Professor McGlade is a fellow of two learned societies (FLS and FRSA), has received international prizes, honours and honorary degrees in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Romania, Sweden, UK, the USA and various global and regional institutions and professional associations. She was the GSDI Global Citizen 2013.
Her educational degrees include BSc (Hons) Marine Biology, Biochemistry and Soil Science, University College of North Wales; PhD Aquatic Sciences and Zoology, University of Guelph, Canada; MA University of Cambridge.