Rachel Parkinson is lecturer in computational ecotoxicology and neuroethology at Queen Mary University of London and a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her research integrates neurophysiology, behavior and computational modeling to understand how environmental stressors affect insect sensory systems and pollinator health. She develops AI-driven tools to accelerate bioscience research, including equipment for high-throughput behavioral toxicology and a large language model pipeline for systematic reviews.
Parkinson earned her Ph.D. at the University of Saskatchewan, where she investigated how pesticides alter visual motion circuits and escape behaviors in locusts, under the supervision of Jack Gray. As a Grass Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory, she demonstrated pesticide-induced disruption of orientation behavior in honeybees. She later held a Royal Society Newton International Fellowship at the University of Oxford, studying taste perception in bees with Geraldine Wright.
