Speaker

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  Adam Fenech Provost of Research at the Canadian University Dubai
  

  Adam Fenech

  Provost of Research at the Canadian University Dubai

  Dr. Fenech has worked extensively in the area of climate change since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change First Assessment Report in 1988. He has represented Canada at international climate negotiating sessions; written climate policy speeches for Canadian Environment Ministers; and authored Canadian reports on climate change to the United Nations. Dr. Fenech has taught at the University of Toronto as well as the Smithsonian Institution for over 20 years, and lectures regularly at universities across Canada and around the world. Working as a climate researcher for over 25 years at Environment Canada, Canada’s National Environmental Agency, Dr. Fenech shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  At the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), Dr. Fenech created and launched the first Bachelor of Science programme in Applied Climate Change and Adaptation. Garnering funding for the building and launching of the Canadian Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation in St. Peter’s Bay, Prince Edward Island, Dr. Fenech was the inaugural Associate Dean of the new School of Climate Change and Adaptation at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). He was also the director of UPEI’s Climate Research Lab that conducts research on the vulnerability, impacts and adaptation to climate change, where his virtual reality depiction of sea level rise has won international awards, including one from MIT, for communicating coastal science. His visualization of coastal change, known as CLIVE (CoastaL Impacts Visualization Environment), was also launched as a commercial entity exporting internationally including to the city of Los Angeles, California, USA. He maintains the largest fleet of drones at a Canadian university including the largest drone in the country with a four metre wingspan. Dr. Fenech is featured as one of forty brilliant and influential Canadians in a book titled Inspiring Canadians: Forty Brilliant Canadians and their Visions for the Nation.
  Dr. Fenech was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal (Prince Edward Island) (2023) created to celebrate the 70th anniversary year of Queen Elizabeth’s Accession to the Throne, for his “positive impact on the preservation of the environment.”
  In creative works, Dr. Fenech has recently co-authored a play A Climate Carol, (2022) a re-imagining of Dicken’s famous Christmas classic with climate change themes and messaging, which was staged for the first time in 2025. As a movie producer of PEI Climate Stories, (2021-2025) a new series of short films exploring the impacts of climate change on Prince Edward Island and the adaptation strategies being implemented by Prince Edward Islanders, Dr. Fenech’s films have been accepted to the Charlottetown Film Festival, the SIFF – Switzerland International Film Festival, and was a semi-finalist at the Better Cities Film Festival 2021 in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
  He is presently the Provost of Research at the Canadian University Dubai where he continues his climate change work in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.