Cara Augustenborg Keynote Speaker

Dr. Cara Augustenborg is an environmental scientist.   She is an Assistant Professor in Landscape Studies and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin; a member of Ireland’s Climate Change Advisory Council and a member of the President of Ireland’s Council of State.

She also hosts the national environmental radio show and podcast “Down to Earth” on Newstalk and serves on the advisory committee of Teagasc’s agri-environmental Signpost programme.

Cara is a former Chairperson of both Friends of the Earth Europe and Friends of the Earth Ireland and a former Government appointee to the advisory committee for Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency and the National Dialogue on Climate Action.  She was the first person in Ireland to join Al Gore’s Climate Reality Programme in 2013. Her blog, The Verdant Yank, was awarded Ireland’s best political and current affairs blog in 2016. She was awarded the title of “Woman of Influence” at the Irish Women’s Awards in 2020.

In 2016, the Sunday Independent named Cara as one of the 20 most influential people to lead the low carbon transition in Ireland and GreenNews.ie called her one of five women in Ireland making incalculable contributions to Irish environmental issues.

Cara conducted her doctoral research at Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Research Authority, Teagasc, and was the Irish Ambassador for Ben & Jerry’s Climate Change College, traveling to the Arctic with the late Marc Cornelissen in 2008 to witness the impacts of climate change first-hand. 

Cara attended University of Washington and received a B.Sc. in Biochemistry. She then completed an M.Sc. in Environmental Health Sciences and a Doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

She has lived in Ireland since 2003, when she moved her to pursue research on a Fulbright Scholarship at Teagasc in Co. Wexford and continued work there until 2007 as a Walsh Fellow. She then did post-doctoral research in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Business and University College Dublin’s School of Agriculture before branching out into environmental policy and climate advocacy.