Susan E. Parks

Parks obtained a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University (1998) and a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (2003).[1] Following her time in Woods Hole, Parks was a postdoctoral investigator at Cornell University before joining the faculty at Pennsylvania State University. Parks is currently an associate professor of Biology at Syracuse University.[2]

At a young age, Parks' father introduced her to recordings of whale sounds and, in a 2010 interview, Parks describes the connection between this moment and an undergraduate animal behavior class that led her to a research project with frogs and ultimately her Ph.D. research on right whales.[3] During her Ph.D., Parks used an historical archive of whale sounds and determined that right whale calls increased in volume when ambient noise levels increased.[4][5] Parks has also used tags temporarily placed on right whales to study their ecology[6] and research by Holly Root-Gutteridge, a postdoctoral investigator working with Parks, has revealed that right whale songs change over a whale's lifespan.[7] By tracking the 'gunshot' sound made by right whales, Parks and colleagues determined that right whales use Roseway Basin, a region of the Scotian Shelf, from August to November as an area for breeding.[8][9]

Through the use of sound, Parks has also examined the connection between higher temperatures and sound in katydids,[10] traffic noise and frogs,[11][12] and seals that may not be loud enough to overcome noise levels from human activities.[13] Parks, Jennifer Miksis-Olds, and Samuel Denes have used sound to define the bounds of biological habitats.[14] Whales vary the noises they make and Parks' research has described the soft sounds used by mother and calf pairs as 'whispers' which may avoid the unwanted attention of predators.[15][16] The clock-like sounds in humpback whales could be a signal to nearby whales about the presence of food or a means to get the whales' prey to come out of the sand.[17][18] After the 9/11 attacks, an unplanned collaboration between Parks, Rosalind Rolland, and a team of researchers[19][20] concluded that a short-term reduction in ship noise altered hormone levels in whales.[21][22]

In addition to her research, Parks mentors women in science and in 2016 Parks said she "...wanted to be a senior scientist in the field to provide young women an example of a female role model."[23]

• Young Investigator Award, Office of Naval Research (2008)
• Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (2009)[24][25]
• Kavli Frontier Fellow, National Academy of Science (2010)[26]

Susan E. Parks publications indexed by Google Scholar