Rachel Russell
- PhD Postgraduate Student
Contact
Location
- Department of Plant Sciences, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EA
About
Rachel Russell is a PhD Postgraduate Student at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge.
Previous Positions
Before returning to academia, I worked as an electronics engineer for over a decade (mostly for arm). I led some big teams building hardware accelerators for machine learning and I’ve come back to academia to explore how ML technology can be applied in agriculture. I’ve also had various placements and consultancy roles including keeping BBC Alba on air in Glasgow, working for Hitachi in Japan, designing control electronics for a telecoms start up and developing a drug delivery device for arthritis patients.
Qualifications
2022 - Masters in Robotics and Autonomous Systems Engineering - Lincoln University, England
2005 - MEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering - University of Cambridge, England
Research
Research Group
Research Overview
Invasive plant diseases threaten agricultural production and natural ecosystems. For example, Xylella fastidiosa has killed large numbers of olive trees in Italy with future economic impact estimated in the billions of euros. At the same time, the resources to manage these pathogens are limited. My PhD project is sponsored by Defra and aims to explore and evaluate the use of reinforcement learning approaches to optimise control of invasive plant diseases. I build landscape scale plant disease models and combine them with reinforcement learning algorithms so they can search for more effective control strategies. Additionally, in 2025, I had the opportunity to work with the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) building a model to support the work of the Xylella fastidiosa working group. This work is due to form part of the updated scientific opinion for Xylella and feed into policymaking at a European level.