Lisa Burke, who is a native of Killeshin near Carlow town, Ireland was weather and science presenter for Sky News from 2000 to 2010. Lisa graduated with a Masters Degree in 1999. She postponed studying for her PhD when offered the post as first science reporter for Sky.
Lisa Burke was educated at Killeshin National School until her family moved to Ilford, Essex in England when she was ten years old. Having completed her second level education in Essex she got a place at Murray Edwards College to study Natural Sciences. Murray Edwards College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge which was founded as “New Hall” in 1954. She graduated with a first class Masters Degree in 1999. She won two university prizes and was made a scholar of New Hall. She intended to study for a PhD and took some time out to work in the pharmaceutical industry.
It was during this time, in October 2000 that Lisa Burke was offered a post with Sky News as a weather presenter. She was voted ‘sexiest weather girl of all time’ a year later in a poll of 1,000 men. She also worked on other Sky channels such as Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Learning. Lisa has also worked on RTE on programmes such as No Frontiers, The Restaurant and Brides of Franc.
Having left Sky News Lisa and her family moved to Abu Dhabi in 2010 where her husband Adrian Wells had been appointed launch director of Sky News Arabia. She began to write articles for the weekend magazine of the ‘The National’ newspaper whilst resident in Abu Dhabi.
Lisa, whose father was Pipe Major of the Killeshin Pipe Band has a passion for music and plays piano, violin, tin whistle and piano accordion. Whilst at Cambridge she sang with Cambridge University Choir and has performed with the BBC Symphony Chorus for many years. She is a keen advocate for science, has written and published four science books for children and created the idea of ‘Mini Scientists’.
Lisa Burke was born in the year 1977 On This Day.
Photo by Iain Farrell 