A/Prof Betsy Parkinson attended Rhodes College, where she obtained her B.S. in chemistry in 2010. She conducted graduate research with Prof. Paul Hergenrother at the UIUC on the synthesis and mechanisms of the deoxynybomycin family of natural products. After obtaining her Ph.D. in 2015, she performed postdoctoral studies with Prof. William Metcalf at UIUC studying the biosynthesis of phosphonate containing natural products. Betsy started her laboratory in the Departments of Chemistry and Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Purdue University in the Fall of 2018. In her lab, research focuses on the identification of novel bioactive peptide natural products from cryptic bacterial biosynthetic gene clusters. Additionally, she studies the unique and challenging chemistries performed by natural product biosynthetic enzymes, such as cyclization of small peptides.