A native of Chicago, John Parkhill completed degrees at the University of Chicago in mathematics and chemistry, before earning a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry, with a focus on strongly correlated quantum many-body problems. Following a Postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University with Alan Asurpu-Guzik, Parkhill was an assistant professor at The University of Notre Dame where he obtained the NSF CAREER award, applying deep learning techniques to atomic dynamics.