Her early research studied electronic design automation; later in her career, her interests shifted to neuromorphic engineering, biomimetic architecture for computer vision, analog circuits, carbon nanotube field-effect transistors, and nanotechnology.
[5] Parker's father, Joseph K. Cline, was a biochemist who (with Robert R. Williams) first synthesized thiamine; because of him, she grew up interested in science from a young age.
[2][4] She became one of two female engineering students at North Carolina State University (NCSU),[4] where Wayland P. Seagraves became a mentor.
[1][4] After graduating from NCSU in 1970,[1] Parker went to Stanford University on an NSF Fellowship,[4] but was frustrated by her inability to find a faculty member who worked on brain modeling; Stanford professor Michael A. Arbib, who worked in this area, had recently moved to another university.
[5][6] She was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University from 1975 to 1980,[7] recruited there by Angel G. Jordan, and began working in high-level synthesis, the automated design of computer hardware from an algorithm describing its intended behavior.