Rachel is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Applied Climate Sciences at the University of Southern Queensland working with the Northern Australia Climate Program (NACP). Prior to this, Rachel completed her PhD at the Australian National University Fenner School of the Environment & Society, investigating the large-scale climate processes that drive extreme fire weather. Before this, she also worked as a climate change adaptation and mitigation consultant.

Rachel's current research is predominantly funded by Meat and Livestock Australia Donor Company through NACP, and is aimed at developing relevant thermal stress index thresholds to help the northern cattle grazing industry better manage drought and climate risks, and using climate model projections to investigate how these may evolve in the future. Rachel's main work has centred on the skill of hindcasts and forecasts in ACCESS-S2, ACCESS-G3 and ACCESS-GE for thermal stress indices. Currently, she is looking into two significant cattle chill event case studies in northern Australia.