Dr. Lynne E. Parker joined the faculty of the Department of Computer Science (now part of the new Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) at The University of Tennessee-Knoxville in August 2002, founding the Distributed Intelligence Laboratory at that time. Besides her appointment as Professor in the EECS Department at UTK, she also holds an appointment as Adjunct Distinguished Research and Development Staff Member in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she worked as a full time researcher for several years. She is also Assistant Director of the UT/ORNL Science Alliance.

Dr. Parker received her Ph.D. degree in computer science in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), performing her research on cooperative control algorithms for multi-robot systems in MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, with a minor in brain and cognitive science. She received her M.S. degree in computer science from The University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and her B.S. degree in computer science from Tennessee Technological University, with a minor in mathematics.

Dr. Parker is a leading international researcher in the field of cooperative multi-robot systems. She has published over 100 articles in the areas of mobile robot cooperation, human-robot cooperation, robotic learning, intelligent agent architectures, and robot navigation. These publications include five edited books on the topic of distributed robotics. She was awarded the 1999 DOE Office of Science Early Career Scientist Award, and the 2000 PECASE (Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers) for her research in multi-robot systems. She also received a 2000 UT-Battelle Technical Achievement Award for Significant Research Accomplishments. In 2006, she was awarded the Angie Warren Perkins Award for scholorship, teaching, and contributions to campus intellectual life. In 2007, she was the UTK Department of Computer Science Professor of the Year.

She is an active leader in her field, and is a frequent invited speaker at international conferences, workshops, and universities, having given over 70 invited lectures. Dr. Parker has taught invited short courses on the topic of distributed robotics in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in Madrid, Spain. In 1998 she served on an Artificial Intelligence Delegation to the People's Republic of China. She was a selected member of the 2004-2005 class of the Defense Science Study Group, which is a program administered by the Institute for Defense Analyses for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to introduce professors of science and engineering to the challenges facing national security. Since 2003, she has also been an appointed member of the National Research Council's Advisory Panel on Armor and Armaments, which is responsible for overseeing research at the Army Research Laboratory. She also served on the Strategic Advisory Commission for the European Commission's research program entitled Beyond Robotics.

She is a Senior Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics, after having served several years as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. She is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Intelligent Systems Magazine. She serves on numerous international conference program committees.

Prof. Parker is also committed to teaching and training the next generation of scholars in computer science. She regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate classes at the University of Tennessee in robotics, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and related topics.

Sponsors of her research include the National Science Foundation (NSF), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S Department of Energy (DOE), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Caterpillar Inc., and Hughes Research Laboratory. Dr. Parker is a member of IEEE, ACM, AAAI, AWIS, and Sigma Xi.

Lynne's husband, Bob, is the President and CEO of Parker Business Consulting and Accounting, P.C., in Knoxville, Tennessee.