Dr Cesca McInerney

Dr Cesca McInerney hosts the Changing Climates column in Adelaide, a science communication initiative produced in partnership with News Corp.

Dr McInerney is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Queensland and Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale University in Geology and Environmental Studies and her master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Chicago in the Department of Geophysical Sciences. She conducted her postdoctoral research at Pennsylvania State University and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Dr McInerney's research focuses on using the chemical signatures from plants, animals and  fossils to understand the influence of climate change on ecosystems. In particular, she is interested in how plant and animal communities reacted to periods of global warming in the geologic past as a potential analogue to future climate change impacts.