Christopher Carr
Christopher E. Carr is an engineer/scientist with training in aero/astro, electrical engineering, medical physics, and molecular biology. In the fall of 2020 he joined the faculty of the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering as an assistant professor and also accepted a secondary appointment in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He is a member of the Aerospace Engineering School's Space Systems Design Lab (SSDL).
He serves as the principal investigator (PI) or science PI for several life detection instrument and/or astrobiology/space biology projects, and is broadly interested in searching for, and expanding the presence of, life beyond Earth while enabling a sustainable human future. He previously served as a research scientist at MIT in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Department of Molecular Biology. He serves as a Scott M. Johnson Fellow in the U.S. Japan Leadership Program.
Carr's research interests include space instrument development; space missions and systems seeking, supporting life beyond Earth, from microbes to humans; astrobiology, genomics; single molecule detection; machine learning; microbial adaptation and evolution; origin of life; planetary protection.
Professor Carr’s teaching focuses on fundamental aerospace engineering courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including space systems design, planetary spacecraft development, space instrumentation, and technical communication. His instruction emphasizes project-based learning, integration of education and research, and synthesis of hard and soft skills to design and build space systems, focusing on instrumentation, including for life detection and astronaut crew health and safety.
Space instrument development; space missions and systems seeking, supporting life beyond Earth, from microbes to humans; astrobiology, genomics; single molecule detection; machine learning; microbial adaptation and evolution; origin of life; planetary protection. Human performance in extreme environments; bioastronautics; extravehicular activity (EVA); metabolism and aging.
Lab/Collaborations:
- Space Systems Design Lab (SSDL)
Disciplines:
- Systems Design & Optimization
AE Multidisciplinary Research Areas:
- Space Exploration and Earth Monitoring
- 2005 ScD, Medical Physics, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, MIT
- 2001 SM,Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT
- 1999 SB, Aeronautics and Astronautics (Minor in Economics), MIT
- 1999 SB, Electrical Science and Engineering, MIT
- Carr CE, Ramírez-Colón JL, Duzdevich D, Lee S, Taniguchi M, Ohshiro T, Komoto Y, Soderblom JM, Zuber MT. Solid-State Single-Molecule Sensing with the Electronic Life-Detection Instrument for Enceladus/Europa (ELIE). Astrobiology. 2023 Oct;23(10):1056-1070. doi: 10.1089/ast.2022.0119. Epub 2023 Sep 29. PMID: 37782210.
- Moore, R.A., Azua-Bustos, A., González-Silva, C. et al. Unveiling metabolic pathways involved in the extreme desiccation tolerance of an Atacama cyanobacterium. Sci Rep 13, 15767 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41879-8
- French, R., Mandy, C., Hunter, R., Mosleh, E., Sinclair, D., Beck, P., Seager, S., Petkowski, J. J., Carr, C. E., Grinspoon, D. H., Baumgardner, D., & on behalf of the Rocket Lab Venus Team. (2022). Rocket Lab Mission to Venus. Aerospace, 9(8), 445. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9080445
- Carr CE. Resolving the History of Life on Earth by Seeking Life As We Know It on Mars. Astrobiology. 2022 Jul;22(7):880-888. doi: 10.1089/ast.2021.0043. Epub 2022 Apr 25. PMID: 35467949; PMCID: PMC9298492.
- Daniel Duzdevich, Christopher E Carr, Dian Ding, Stephanie J Zhang, Travis S Walton, Jack W Szostak, Competition between bridged dinucleotides and activated mononucleotides determines the error frequency of nonenzymatic RNA primer extension, Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 49, Issue 7, 19 April 2021, Pages 3681–3691, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkab173