Rate My Professor Emily J. Rayfield

Professor Emily J. Rayfield is Professor of Palaeobiology in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. She holds a B.A. in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the function of living and extinct animals, employing biomechanical analysis including finite element analysis to examine skeletal mechanics and the relationship between form and function in vertebrates, with particular emphasis on dinosaurs and major evolutionary transitions such as dinosaur-bird evolution and the origin of mammals.

Rayfield joined the University of Bristol in 2005 following postdoctoral research and fellowship positions at Oxford, Cambridge, and the Natural History Museum London, and was appointed Professor in 2014. She has received numerous awards including the Hodson Award from the Palaeontological Association in 2009, the Lyell Fund from the Geological Society of London in 2011, the President’s Medal from the Palaeontological Association in 2018, the Bigsby Medal from the Geological Society of London in 2019, the Scientific Medal from the Zoological Society of London in 2019, and the Gabor Medal from the Royal Society in 2024 for pioneering engineering-informed computational palaeobiology. She served as President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology from 2018 to 2020.